Grave
by BCooper
Summary: Because some secrets are better left six feet under . . . . Part 1: Joker Origin; Part 2: Joker/OC
1. Chapter 1

**Grave**

**Part I:**

_Jack_

or

_- The Descent_** -**

"_For those whom God to ruin has designed He fits for fate, and first destroys their mind." _

_~ John Dryden_

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There were two cracks on the ceiling that interwove like yarn. They looked like one long strand of DNA, twisting and twisting, on and on across the stark white plaster that chipped and occasionally fell onto the bed below. Sometimes Jack would pick up the bits of plaster and run them between his fingers; sometimes the plaster was sharp enough, the paint dry and brittle enough, to slip underneath of his nails and make him regret picking it up in the first place. But he didn't regret that the plaster fell. He liked the design the cracks made in the ceiling. When he was younger he used to like to imagine that thousands of little plaster ants were working tirelessly, chewing away at the roof of his bedroom just to make those designs for him. Jack knew better by now, but it was still nice to look up on. Better than the plain white with dingy spots of water damage which made up the rest of the house. Jack thought that if he had to spend his life looking up at a plain white ceiling like his bedroom without those cracks, he might just go insane.

Something hard and heavy hit the wall to his room and a chunk of plaster fell from above, landing on his stomach. Dust floated down into his hair and landed on his face, and he had to throw his arm over his mouth to muffle his sneeze. Jack hated sneezing – he hated any sort of uncontrollable bodily function that had the annoying habit of interrupting his thoughts or his day. Most of all he hated anything noisy that brought attention to himself. At times like these it was best to blend into the background; it was better, when you lived in his house, to pretend you didn't live at all. In a way, nobody in Jack's house was alive – they were all dying or dead already. His parents, they were dead. They just didn't know it yet. His father, drinking himself into obscurity night after night; and his mother, a weak bystander who did not have the strength to break out of this abusive cycle. Yes, they were dead. There was no hope for them.

Jack was one of the dying. He hung onto life by a thread, as thin as those cracks that crisscrossed his ceiling. Day after day watching plaster fall in his room, hearing the same shouts, the same arguments: Money, money, money. Drinking, whores and shirked responsibility. And sickness. Death. So much about sickness and death. As if the very walls did not cry out that Death was approaching; as if the proof that one of the living was passing from the world didn't hang in the air like rotting meat. But he was constantly reminded. Because Jack was dying, but he wasn't the only one. He wasn't the actual one.

Somebody more cultured than he would reference the works of an esteemed author when speaking of the thin young girl that slipped into Jack's room at that moment. But Jack had never been one for English. He spoke well and knew how to write, though his penmanship was woefully messy, and that was all he needed to know. Books and poems held no interest to him. If he had read more he might have made some glorious comparison to make the girl's poor state of health seem like something less dreadful than it was. Perhaps he could have paralleled her bald head to something shining and luminous. Or maybe he could have waxed philosophic on the way her paper thin skin reminded him of velvet, or silk, or some other luxurious fabric. Jack wasn't entirely sure he remembered what velvet or silk felt like to begin with, so maybe he wouldn't have been able to say something like that even if he had been sophisticated enough to think of it.

Lola was still in this realm – this realm of the living. She and Jack – two children just waiting to die. Except Jack was healthy and strong; his hair and his skin and his height spoke of vitality and youth. Not even the Narrows could take that from him. He wished it wasn't so; he wished he could trade in some of his capable body parts for her trembling limbs. Who deserved golden-brown curls more than she did? But she wasn't the one who got them. Jack was.

She crawled into bed next to him, shaking as she did so. But she was always shaking. Trembling like a leaf. Lola didn't have much strength; not for something as trivial as moving, though she did try. Most of it, these days, was invested in speaking. Jack remembered the first time she had talked instead of getting up and moving around. She had just sat in her bed and jabbered on and on and on about everything. About clothes, about boys, about cars, about what she'd buy if she wasn't so poor, about what Jack would probably buy if he wasn't so poor, about what the Narrows would look like if those bigshots over at Wayne Enterprises came in with their fancy business suits and briefcases and remodeled the entire place. She had told him that there would probably be buildings made completely of glass, even the floors. They'd walk across glass floors all day, and maybe some of them would have aquariums underneath, so that you'd feel like Jesus walking across water. She figured those businessmen would like that. Feeling like Jesus. Because who wouldn't want to feel like Jesus? She had asked him if he ever thought about what it'd be like to be Jesus.

Jack had been in the middle of a science project and he was angry that she wouldn't stop talking. He had yelled at her, he remembered.

"_Why won't you just shut up, Lola? Why won't you just shut the hell up, already? Stop talking."_

"_What else am I supposed to do?"_

"_I dunno! Get up, go outside! Go find that friend of yours and play with the sidewalk chalk I stole from that rich kid at the bus stop."_

"_I can't get up. I-I can't get up. I can't move my legs."_

That day she couldn't, but most days she could. It happened once in a while when she got real weak, or when she spent too long running around outside with that girl who lived a couple buildings down. That girl was always coming over and dragging his sister outside, getting her worked up about clothes and lipstick and eye makeup that Lola couldn't have or looked stupid wearing. Jack hated that the girl was always dragging Lola around and making her feel like she wasn't different from the rest of them. Like she wasn't dying.

"I'm scared, Jack."

"_Now don't be scared, Jack. Your sister is going to be f-fine."_

"I hate it when Mom cries . . . I wish she'd stop crying . . ."

_Jack wished she'd stop crying, too. She was lying. Lying through her tears as she told him that Lola was sick but that she'd be all right. He knew that. Jack was always good at reading people, and his mother wasn't really very good at keeping people from reading her. That's why his father could always work her up all the time; she was way too emotional. He guessed that this time she was probably right to cry. Jack knew just looking at Lola that she wasn't going to be fine. She was going to die. She was real sick and they didn't have any money, and she was going to die. _

Back before Lola was sick, Jack used to take her down to the corner store to buy candy. He was ten and she was seven, and they'd always get a real huge bag of candy and split it between themselves. Jack spent all week long picking up coins from the gutters and sometimes even sneaking up on a homeless guy and taking them from his tin cup. Jack never felt too bad about it. It seemed to him that if the homeless man was more careful with his change he wouldn't be homeless anymore – so Jack was just teaching him a lesson, he figured. If Jack was sitting on the street begging for coins all day and that was all he did, he sure wouldn't be stupid enough to let some dumb kid come sneak up and take all his change to buy some candy. People who had money but didn't take care of it, didn't deserve it. It didn't matter if they were homeless or rich like a Wayne – if they were careless with their cash then Jack assumed they didn't want it anymore. So he took it. He put it to good use – Lola really loved that candy. Or maybe it was just being with him that she loved. But either way, Jack knew that he had used those coins in a more productive manner than that bum would have. Jack made his sister laugh and smile. How many people would that homeless man make smile, if he had kept those coins?

"Do you think that he'll hurt her tonight, Jack?" she asked. Jack said nothing. The answer was as evident as the muffled sobs that could be heard through the paper thin walls.

One thinly boned hand crept across his chest and gripped at his nightshirt. There was a hole in the left armpit and dried blood all down the front from the time his old man had come at him with a two-by-four. He was supposed to have used it to fix the wall in the bathroom, where the wood had rotted out. But instead he broke it in half on Jack's head, and broke Jack's nose while he was at it. The bathroom still had a gaping hole in it. Sometimes Lola would ask Jack to check to make sure there weren't any monsters lurking in the hole before she could go in and take a pee.

"_Just check, Jack!"_

"_Jeez, Lola! It's four in the morning!"_

"_Jack, please, I thought I heard a noise. I thought I heard like a scratching noise. Like there was something with claws up in the wall and it was scratching on the pipes. I think it might be a demon. And as soon as I pull my underpants down it's gonna pop out and bite me on my butt."_

"_There isn't a demon in the wall, Lola. Go to the bathroom and leave me alone."_

"_Jack, I can't! Please, I really have ta go. I just wanna make sure it's not going to pop out and kill me while I'm peeing. I don't wanna die on the toilet, Jack."_

"_Why not? If it was good enough for Elvis, it's good enough for you."_

"_You aren't funny. You're not funny, Jack."_

Nobody really thought Jack was funny. He didn't think it was because he was hopelessly dull or stupid. He just figured he didn't have much of a sense of humor. Or else it was his voice. Usually he was too busy thinking about other things to focus on telling somebody something with gusto. He guessed you could say that he didn't have any stage presence, if that's what it was. If it was him and another person, like that girl down the street, telling the same story, everybody would laugh at that girl and not one of them would laugh at Jack. That girl moved her hands around and her eyes lit up and her voice got hushed during the dramatic parts and high during the exciting parts. Jack's voice stayed pretty much the same all the time. Maybe that's why nobody really thought he was funny. Maybe it was all in the voice. He'd have to remember to work on that. Moving his hands more and making his voice something people would really remember; something people would really be fascinated by.

There was a shriek and a crash, and Lola's hand clutched spasmodically at Jack's skinny chest. There wasn't much meat on Jack. Once, Lola had told him that she wished he was fat because then she could curl up next to him and pretend she was sleeping on a walrus. For some strange reason she'd always wondered what it'd be like to sleep against a walrus. She told Jack that she figured it'd be pretty funny, with their mustache blowing around as they snored and their blubber jiggling as they breathed. It was her biggest disappointment that her brother did not resemble a walrus. Sometimes it was his biggest disappointment, too. He tried to grow a mustache, once, but it turned out all patchy. And blond. Jack didn't think that walruses had patchy blond mustaches. He figured their mustaches were black and full. That girl down the street had laughed herself silly when she saw he'd shaved it off. Once he realized he wasn't going to grow a huge black 'stache, he had given up the fight and taken his dad's rusty old razor to his upper lip. He had nicked himself at least twelve times and had to answer the door that morning with bits of cheap dollar store toilet paper stuck all over his face. She told him he was hilarious, and he smiled like he'd done it on purpose, for an act. She was the only one who thought he was hilarious.

"I told you to stop throwing that in my face. You just like making me feel like dirt, huh? You just like feeling like the _maaan_ of the house. But you're not. You're just a stupid little bitch. A stupid, worthless _whore!_"

Lola covered her ears and buried her face into Jack's shirt. He could feel wetness where her face pressed against the thin fabric, and he wondered if it was tears or blood. Sometimes when she got real upset, like when she heard their parents fighting, she would get a nose bleed. Once she even started coughing up blood and it took Jack yelling himself hoarse for his parents to realize something was wrong. She'd coughed up a bucketful of the stuff before his dad had put down his fist and his mother had picked herself up off the floor to go check on her daughter.

"Are you bleeding?" Jack asked his ceiling. His ceiling didn't talk back; Lola did.

"No." Her voice was muffled and she picked up her head from Jack's chest, and then dabbed at her nose. "Maybe. Yeah, I think so. Is this blood or snot?"

She held up her hand for Jack to check – crimson, slipping down her fingers with a consistency just a bit thinner than honey. Back when he was really young, before he lived in the Narrows and before Lola was born, even, he remembered his mom used to make him peanut butter and honey sandwiches, sometimes with banana slices. And when he ate the sandwich he'd get honey all down his hands, and the golden droplets would slide down his fingers just the way the blood was sliding down Lola's. His dad hated it because when he came home from work (this was when his dad had a job) he would sit down at the table and put his elbow up, right in a sticky patch. He said it ruined all his suits. Jack bet that blood would ruin suits just the same way his dad said honey did.

"Blood. That's blood." Jack pulled his shirt up over his head and Lola put hers back and pinched at her nose. When he pressed his bundled up shirt to her face her hands were covered in scarlet blood, the paleness of her skin standing out against the violently bold color of her life seeping from her face. Her hands were trembling and droplets were falling onto his sheets, but those were already stained with blood so it didn't matter. His blood, her blood, his mom's blood . . . he didn't care, the sheets were filthy anyway. That girl down the street, she said that she'd buy him some new sheets soon, because his were so gross she didn't want to sit down on them. Maybe she would. He hoped that she let him have used ones. Maybe they'd be from her bed. Maybe they'd be decorated with those tiny yellow flowers she liked so much. Maybe they'd still smell like her a little.

"Should I break them up? Do you need the hospital?" Jack asked. Lola shook her head violently. Jack had to reach up and grab her skull between his hands to keep her from shaking her eyeballs right out of their sockets.

"Nah, it's just a nosebleed. I feel all right, tonight." Lola snuffled a bit and folded the tee shirt over so that the wet, bloody part was facing inward. She wiped her hands off. By the time she pressed the shirt back to her face, there was a line of scarlet streaking down over her lips, past her chin, sliding down her neck. Her skin was so white. Chalk white. It almost glowed a little. It was almost scary to see something so dark running down such white, white skin. It was almost like somebody had taken paint and tried to make some horrific art piece out of her. In a way Jack thought it was sort of beautiful. That blood flowing down her face like that, standing out so clearly against her skin. He knew that no matter how old he got, whenever he saw fresh blood on a person's face he'd think of his sister.

"I just wanna sleep with you. I don't wanna go back to my room."

Jack shook his head. Lola's eyes were wide, peeking at him from over the bloody shirt still shoved against her face.

"You know you can't. You know Dad likes to come beat on me for a while, after he finishes with Mom. Go back to bed. Bleed anymore and we'll have to take you to the hospital again. We don't have any money to go to the hospital again."

"Maybe he won't come to hit you if he sees I'm here. He don't hit me. Maybe if I just throw myself across your body then he'll realize what a monster he is, and he'll stop drinkin' and he'll get a job, and he'll never hit you or Mom again."

Jack smiled. He reached out and wiped off a fleck of blood from his sister's cheekbone. It smeared across his fingertip like red paint. Back when Jack was young he used to love to finger painting. Red was his favorite, because he loved the way it looked splashed and smudged across that plain white canvas. It was so much more dramatic than blue or purple or green or even black. Red was violent and loud and Jack loved it. Lola's blood reminded him of that paint. Her blood against her skin was like red paint against a fresh white canvas.

"All right, all right, I'll go ta my room," Lola grumbled. She stood up shakily, her shoulders hunched and the shirt still pressed to her face. She turned and looked back at Jack, sitting upright on his bed with his head bowed. "Can I keep the shirt? It reminds me of you. It'll make me feel better when I hear him come in here . . ."

Jack looked up at her. "It's all bloody."

"So? You're always bloody, too. That's why it reminds me of you."

"_Jack, why are you covered in blood?_"

"Not always . . ." Jack mumbled.

"Yeah, always. You never come home without a scratch. You've been so beat up I don't think you feel anything anymore. I bet you a piranha could get you right on the nose and you'd just laugh because it wasn't nothin' compared to when dad got that two-by-four."

"_What happened?" his mother asked anxiously, hurrying to get a dish rag. Jack held his right palm over his left arm and mumbled something incoherent. "Say that again. I didn't catch your explanation for this."_

"_I said I got scraped by a nail." He hadn't. Some boys had made fun of the night his dad had come back from the bar and passed out in the middle of the street. They'd gotten into a fight and one of them had sliced Jack with a piece of glass from a broken alcohol bottle that littered the street. "I was running around with that girl who lives down the street. Lola's friend. And there was a nail sticking out of one of the buildings and it caught me right on the arm. We were playing cops and robbers. I was the robber."_

"_You're a little liar, Jack Napier. Who taught you how to make up those stories?"_

"I think I might feel a piranha chewing my nose off," Jack replied, though he really couldn't imagine anything hurting more than that night, and that two-by-four. His nose used to be a lot less squashed than it was now. "What are you waiting for? Get to your room. And don't let them see you."

Lola snuffled a couple of times, like she was trying to get it all out of her system before she went into the hall and crept back to her room. Jack didn't really have a room, even though he still called it that. He slept in the little utility-room-slash-closet that used to be for all the towels and storage and stuff. The hot water heater was tucked away in a corner at the foot of his bed and whenever anybody wanted to take a shower, even if it was at five in the morning, they'd come and yell at Jack to wake up and mess with the stupid machine so that they wouldn't have to shower in the cold. Jack knew how to get the hot water heater to work but nobody else in the house did. He was always good at rigging up mechanical things. That's partly why they stuck him back there, but mostly it was because they said that Lola needed her own room. Jack didn't think Lola needed her own room, and neither did Lola. She would have liked having Jack near, and Jack would have felt better knowing that if Lola started coughing in the night he could make sure that she wasn't going to choke on her own blood and spit. But their parents didn't like the two of them together. His mom said that boys and girls shouldn't be in the same room past the age of ten, no matter how sick the girl is. His dad said that they were ungrateful little heathens, plotting against him, and that he didn't want to give them a chance to plan anything.

"_You and that sickly brat are working against me. You're tryin' to think of a way to get me outta here. Little bastards, the both of you! Plotting and planning . . . I kn . . . know you are."_

"_We're not . . . we're not . . ." Jack was bleeding so heavily he was sure he would die. He'd never bled so hard in his life. It was like it was everywhere, the blood. It was running from his nose, from his mouth, from his forehead. It was in his nostrils and his eyes and he was choking on it. He could feel it all over his arms and his neck and his chest. And he could see the sticky slickness of it on the floor next to him, staining the cheap yellow linoleum. Crimson looked so ugly against yellow. _

"_You ARE!" his father roared, and swung the piece of wood again, like a Louisville slugger. Jack threw up his hands and it caught him on the elbow. Fire erupted in his bones. "I can hear you in there at night, whisperin'! I know yer plannin' somethin'!"_

"_I'm not! I'm NOT! I don't plan anything!" Jack shrieked, his voice cracking, and he heard Lola sobbing and coughing and spluttering from somewhere near. Maybe in the next room. She was watching the whole thing. Jack bet that she thought he was going to die, too. "I don't plan anything . . ."_

He didn't plan anything. Jack had learned long ago that planning things was a huge waste of time. What was the point of making plans to go out with that girl down the street and your sister when you weren't sure if your dad would come home drunk and angry and decide to start a fight? The best way to keep yourself from being disappointed was to set your standards low, and to never plan on things. That was what Jack believed. And Lola was the perfect example for his philosophy. Who better than a terminally ill girl to prove the point that _nothing_ in this world is planned? The idea that a person – the idea that he, Jack, could _control_ things . . . it was laughable. Jack could plan all he wanted, and it wouldn't make a bit of difference at the end of the day – Lola would still be sick and dying, and he, Jack, would still be stuck in the Narrows with no way out. Dying, just like his sister. Except slowly, slowly. He hated that the process of dying was so slow. When he died he wanted it to be fast; he wanted it to be a rush of wind and noise and maybe some elation. That'd be how he would want to go.

That girl down the street, she wanted to die in her sleep. She said that she wanted to close her eyes on the night sky one day, in her comfortable bed, and drift away into heaven so softly that she didn't even recognize it as dying until she was already gone. Jack had stared at her blankly when she told him this.

"_That's boring. Why would you want to die in such a boring way?"_

"_It's not boring, it's nice! Why wouldn't you want to die in your bed, looking up at the stars?"_

"_How would you look up at the stars when you're in bed? You have a roof, don't you? Is your bed outside?"_

"_No, my bed's not outside."_

"_Then how are you going to see the stars when you die?"_

"_Maybe I'll get a sky light. Who said I'll have to die in the bed I've got now? I'll get a sky light and sometimes when I'm bored I'll stick my head out of it and sing to the birds on my roof. And they'll sing back and become my friends, and help me dress in the morning."_

"_You're crazy."_

Jack really thought she _was_ crazy. That girl was always going on about things that didn't make any sort of sense – that's where Lola got all of her off-the-walls ideas. He bet that the girl had even put the idea of sleeping on a walrus into Lola's head. It'd be just like that crazy girl from down the street to go talking about sleeping on walruses. She drove him berserk sometimes because of all the things she said and did, and because of the way she was always pulling his sister outside and dressing her in low cut dresses that didn't fit her because she didn't have a chest, but telling her she looked sexy anyway. And because she didn't understand chemistry like Jack did, and thought that him messing around with chemicals was stupid and a waste of time. And because she laughed all the time. She laughed at anything. That was why she believed Jack was funny – because she thought _everything_ was funny. She was always smiling. She drove Jack nuts sometimes, she was so annoying.

"What the fuck are you doing in there?" His door swung open and his father glowered at him from the hall, his fists clenched. "Christ. Covered in fucking _blood_ again. Goddamn piece of shit . . . you, yer worse than that SLUT out there. She's useless, but you . . . youuu. Yer like a fuc. . . fucking runt in a litter of puppies. Shoulda drowned you . . . shoulda got rid of you when you were still small enough to bury in the back-yard. Ain't no one woulda missed you."

That girl down the street drove Jack crazy sometimes. Most of the time.

"Are you listenin' to me?_ ARE YOU FUCKIN' LISTENIN' TO ME?_"

She drove him crazy, most of the time, but Jack still couldn't stop thinking about her whenever his dad came at him like he was coming at him now.

He wondered why that was.

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**A/N: **So this is the first story I've ever written on this site (or in the Dark Knight category). This is definitely branching out a bit for me, format-and-character-wise, but I've got a clear vision on how I want things to go . . . . Basically, there will be two parts to this story. The first will be told in third-person Jack (the young Joker)'s POV. You can tell that in this first chapter he's young (think around fourteen), but the story will skip around in time and in the next chapter he'll be around sixteen. It'll follow his deterioration into the man known as the Joker. The second part of the story will be told from the third-person POV of "that girl", who will be further explored and properly introduced in the next chapter. Basically we're looking at a JackNapier/OC / Joker/OC type story. It will get progressively darker as the story goes on. **This story is very plot-driven. If you want meaningless OC/Joker sex, this might not be for you. **

** In case you were confused, long bouts of _italics_ signify something that has happened in the past and will sometimes interrupt the present-time actions or dialogue in the first couple of chapters.


	2. Chapter 2

That girl from down the street always knocked on the door with her foot. Two tap-taps and then one loud bang. It made Jack's father furious, but he couldn't very well beat her up since she wasn't his kid. And she was a girl anyway, though if she had been his kid and a girl that probably wouldn't have stopped him. He only refrained from hitting Lola because Lola was so sick – one right hook and her entire skull might collapse and then he'd go to jail for murder. Jack's dad wouldn't do good in jail. They didn't get to drink and sleep on the couch all day in jail. They probably wouldn't let him complain as much as he did when he was at home, in jail, either.

"What the hell is wrong with that girl?" he griped, resting his head on the spotty kitchen table. His cheek was resting halfway in a pile of old ketchup. He didn't notice. He was too hungover. "Tell her to get the fuck away from our house, Jack."

Jack told that girl that there was something wrong with her nearly every day, but hearing his dad ask it like that, hearing him reference her with his loud, abrasive voice . . . something about it made Jack want to take up the empty bottle of alcohol that lay discarded next to the couch and go at his dad with it. If he hit him in just the right way he bet he could kill him instantly. He wouldn't even have time to blink. One swing of the arm and Jack would never feel that meaty fist slamming against his temple again . . . one heavy glass bottle to the head and Jack would never hear him swear in the same sentence as 'that girl' again.

Maybe he would have done it. Maybe he would have walked right over to the couch, picked up that bottle, and started pummeling his father to death with it. Maybe he would have.

"Is that Louise?"

Maybe he would have done it.

"Jack? Jack, is that Louise?"

Another tap-tap, and one more loud bang. Jack's dad groaned. "If you kids don't shut the _fuck_ up, I am going to –"

Jack turned and strode over to the door. She was just in the midst of raising her foot for two more tap-taps, but she stopped and smiled up at him when she saw him. Always smiling. Jack liked to imagine that she only smiled for him, but really he knew it wasn't true. She smiled at everyone. She even smiled at dogs. Even the big vicious ones that snarled at her.

"What took you so long, huh?" she asked, and Lola came up from behind Jack and tried to push past him. Jack nudged her out of the way (an easy thing to do, due to her fragile stature) and leaned against the doorframe. "And what was all that yelling?"

"We were in the middle of a thumb-war tournament. It got pretty intense."

The girl burst out laughing, her eyes crinkling up at the edges. She had the bluest eyes Jack had ever seen in his life. They weren't like any other blue eyes he'd ever seen. There was a boy in his class at school who had blue eyes, but his were this dull kind of dark blue, like an ugly navy color. And the girl who worked at the hardware store had blue eyes too, but hers were real misty colored. They kind of made you feel like her eyeballs were dirty and needed a good scrub-down. They were nothing like _her_ eyes. Her eyes were crystal clear, with a ring of darker blue lining her irises and an almost shockingly clear cobalt color to them. Once, instead of candy, Jack had taken Lola and bought a pack of twenty-four crayons and a cheap coloring book. There was a blue crayon in that box that reminded Jack exactly of her eyes. That's how he knew just how to describe them, because the name of the crayon stamped on the side was just that color: Cobalt Blue. He had slipped it into his pocket and then put it under his pillow that night.

He wasn't sure when he had lost that crayon, but he remembered that it had made him extremely sad to find that it was gone. He suspected Lola had found it on the floor one day and snuck it into her room to color on discarded newspaper. Jack really wished he still had it. He used to pull it out after his dad had finished knocking him around and think of what her eyes would look like if she saw him bleeding and busted like he was. They'd probably get real round and worried, and maybe they'd even glisten with a couple of unshed tears.

He remembered the first time he met her, he couldn't believe that anybody could have eyes so blue. He thought that they must be fake for sure. He remembered asking her if they were fake, and if she was really a blind girl. Jack remembered every second from the first time that he ever saw her.

It had been an especially bright morning. The night before Jack's dad had really roughed him up and Jack had a nasty bruise stretching all the way across his left cheek and closing up his eye. His lip had been split and swollen and his head had ached something terrible. All he had wanted to do was sit in his bed and put his pillow over his face so no light could assault his sensitive eyes. But his mom had grabbed him by the upper arm and tossed him out of the apartment. She hadn't wanted him in the house when his dad woke up, because seeing him always made Jack's father furious. And seeing Jack all bloody and bruised made Jack's dad even angrier, even though it was him who did it. So Jack had grabbed Lola by the hand and pulled her out into the street. It was unbearably sunny, he remembered. Jack had nearly felt like passing out when he stepped out into that sunlight. It'd taken nearly five minutes for him to see two feet in front of him, his vision had gone so dark and spotty.

There had been tons of kids out running around. None of them really talked to Jack, but some of them talked to Lola. They wouldn't talk to her when he was around, though. They were uneasy around him because he was so serious all the time, and he always had bruises on his face. All the kids had been in the middle of playing a game of tag in the street when Jack had stumbled out of the tenant building, but as soon as they had seen Lola looking towards them longingly and that weird older brother of hers covering his face with his hands and standing without moving next to her, they'd taken their game and darted off to the next street over. Jack hadn't cared, but Lola had started crying immediately.

"_Why are you crying? Stop it. Stop crying." _

"_They hate us, Jack. Don't you see them run away from us? All the other kids hate us."_

"_Why do you care if they hate us, Lola? They're idiots. All of them. They're all stupid."_

"_I care because I want to play with them. What's wrong with me? Why don't like they like us?"_

"_It's me they don't like. They think I'm a freak. Go run and play with them and I'll stay right here and you'll see that they let you right in, s'long as I'm not with you."_

Lola had sniffed and protested and said she didn't want to play with kids who thought her brother was a freak, but in the end her love for color tag had won out and she had went jogging over to where the kids had relocated, and sure enough she hadn't returned. Jack had heard her laughter ringing through the air a couple of minutes later. He'd still been standing in the same place, his eyes squinted and the street appearing very distorted around him. He hadn't realized that somebody had come out of their building and sat on their stoop until about ten minutes later, probably. And he'd been standing there the entire time, just rubbing his face and blinking.

When he had finally looked around, he had noticed her immediately. She'd just been sitting on the dirty front steps in a pleated blue-and-grey checkered skirt and a crisp, crisp white blouse. She'd had some sort of navy tie around her neck, but it hung undone and sloppy looking, just like her wildly curly black hair had been coming loose in an almost haphazard fashion from the ponytail on her head. She had looked like one of those private school girls, except nobody around where Jack lived would ever be able to afford to go to anyplace that had uniforms, or even ones that required shirts as crisp and white as the one she was wearing. He'd been able to tell from where he stood, even with one eye swollen shut, that she was probably the prettiest girl he'd ever seen in his life. She hadn't looked like she belonged anywhere near the filthy place where Jack lived. She had looked like she belonged in one of those pictures on the ceilings of the fancy libraries, with all the fat naked babies and girls with handheld string instruments.

When she spoke to him he had nearly fallen over. Her speaking to him was probably the last thing he had ever expected her to do.

"_Are you retarded?"_

"_No."_

"_Oh. I thought you might be, you know, because you just kept standing there blinking and swaying a little bit, like you were about to fall over. Are you sick or something? Why do you just stand there like that?"_

"_I'm praying. That's the way I pray. I'm Hindu, and every day when the sun is in just that spot we have to stop what we're doing and sway back and forth and think about what we'd do if we had a bunch of extra arms like Vishnu. I was thinking that I'd pick a bunch of apples."_

She had stared at him for such a long time that Jack had felt like turning around and walking away. He had known that she must have just moved into that building she had come out of and nobody had told her to avoid him, which was why she had talked to him. Jack had realized that she probably knew to keep from doing it again, now.

And then she had started laughing. And she laughed and she laughed and she laughed until she was bent over and gripping her sides, and there were tears coming out of her eyes. She had laughed so hard that she lost her breath and had to gasp for it, and she made this real high-pitched wheezing noise. Jack hadn't been sure what he had said that made her laugh like that. He had wondered if she was laughing at how stupid he was, because nobody ever laughed when he made jokes. His jokes weren't funny.

When she had finally stopped laughing she rubbed her cheeks and wiped the tears out of her eyes, and she was breathing like she had just gone through an ordeal.

"_Man. Man, that was good. You're a real joker, you know that?"_

"_No."_

"_Well you are. You're a real joker. That was so funny. Hey, come over here and sit down or something. If you're done pr-pr-praying."_

She'd hardly been able to get the word out because she had started laughing again, like she was just reliving the joke and she couldn't believe how funny it was. Jack had thought right then that she had to have something wrong with her. He remembered thinking that this girl must be out of her fucking mind, the way she was laughing at his stupid joke like that. He remembered wanting to ask her if she was retarded herself, because she was sure acting like it. But he hadn't asked her. He had moved towards her like he was being drawn to her by some invisible force, roped in like a little calf at a rodeo. He had almost forgotten about his bruises.

"_Jesus Christ, what's wrong with your face? Did you get hit by a train or something?"_

His hand had gone immediately to his left cheek, where the ugly purple-and-yellow bruise had distorted his features.

"_No. Yesterday I was walking and talking to my sister, and I didn't notice it but there was an open pothole in the middle of the street."_

"_Really? You fell down? Wow."_

"_Yeah. But I was all right. I got up and I was covered in a bunch of sewage and stuff, but I was fine. No broken bones or anything."_

"_But you banged your face up."_

"_No. I was just about to climb back up out of the hole when I heard this growling from behind me. I turned around to see where it was coming from and there were these yellow eyes just glowing at me out of the dark."_

"_No way! What was it?"_

"_An alligator. It was massive. It lunged at me and I had to wrestle it. It got me across the face with its tail. For a while there it was touch and go, but I finally managed to twist it up like a pretzel and then climb back out of the sewer. I took a tooth for a souvenir. It's back in my room."_

And then she had laughed again, slapping her knee. Jack had noticed for the first time that she had on long grey stockings with blue stripes down the side, and she was wearing black buckled shoes with scuffs on the toes. He had owned one pair of dress shoes back then, and they'd been scuffed at the toe, too. Jack had felt that this had connected them somehow. It had taken her an eternity to stop laughing, that time. Even longer than the first time when he had said he was praying.

"_God! God, you're a hoot and a half! What's your name?"_

"_Jack."_

"_I'm Louise. Here, let me scoot over and you can sit down next to me. Try not to trip into any sewers on the way here. I dunno if you'd make it out of another alligator encounter alive."_

"_Death is a possibility we daredevils must come to grips with."_

"_Stop, you're going to make me pee myself."_

Lola had nearly fallen over from shock when she had come wheezing back into sight ten minutes later. She told Jack later that she was sure she was hallucinating, or that Jack and that girl were just a mirage. He couldn't blame her for being stunned – nobody in the neighborhood sat with Jack except for Lola. Especially not when he was so bruised. Lola had come panting over, hardly able to breathe and clutching at her side. Jack remembered thinking that she would pass out where she stood.

"_Who – are you?"_

"_I'm Louise. Do you know Jack? He's something else."_

"_He's my – bro – my broth –"_

"_What's wrong with you, Lola? Why can't you breathe? You've only been running around for twenty minutes."_

It was one of the first times that Jack had any indication that Lola was sick, and that girl had been there to witness it. Sometimes Jack reflected on the idea that his current life, the one that seemed so separate from the one before Lola got sick, had started when he met that girl that sunny morning when he was twelve years old. It was like she was the beginning of Jack's end. It was odd to him that such a horrible chapter of his being could be marked by such a remarkable person.

"_I – need ta lie – lie down – Ja . . . Jack."_

"_What d'you mean you need to lie down? We can't go back inside the house yet, Lola. Mom just kicked us out . . ."_

"_Jack – I really – really need – ta lie – down."_

"_What's wrong with you? Are you sick? Do you need to go to the clinic or something?"_

"_No I – I just need ta – lie down."_

Jack had known she was ill and that she really did need to get to a bed somewhere. It had scared him to see her gasping like that, clutching at her sides with her face drawn and her whole body slumped like she was liable to just fall into a big pile of limbs at any minute. That girl had just stared up at his sister the whole time and he wished that she'd go away and take her large, too-blue eyes somewhere else. Jack had felt like she could see right through them both; like she knew already that the reason they couldn't go home was because Jack's dad would beat the hell out of him again if they did.

"_You can come up to my place. My mom doesn't do much but sit in her room most of the time, and I've got a good T.V. We can watch some shows or something."_

"_You sure?"_

Jack had never been into a girl's house before. He remembered that his heart had sped up and he had gotten ridiculously nervous, and he could only wonder what he was expected to do with his shoes when he got inside. Should he take them off? But his socks had been dirty and the left one had a big hole on the sole. He hadn't wanted her to see his dirty socks.

"_Yeah, I'm sure. Come on, I'll feed you guys crackers or something."_

Jack had picked up his sister and carried her up the stairs to Number Twenty-Five, a door with chipped paint and a dull varnished number. The five had been crooked, and before she went to grab her key she had leaned forward and fogged up the number with her breath, polishing it off with the cuff of her white blouse.

"_For good luck. I always polish the number and I always knock on the door with my feet. I dunno when I started but I figure if I stop, any sort of horrible things could happen. Better not risk it."_

Then she had hooked one of her fingers under her collar and pulled up a thin silver chain with a golden key dangling on it, and bent down low to unlock the door.

"_Sometimes I forget that the key's in the lock and swing the door open, and don't you know I go swinging on into my house right with the door because I've got this dumb chain around my neck? But it's too much of a hassle to take it off and my head's too big to just pull it over. Here, come in. My room's past that couch and to the left. You can just got plop her down onto the bed and I'll get her some water and crackers."_

Jack had felt absurdly out of place from the very beginning. There'd been a lot of boxes in the girl's home, stacked all over the place. But the big things had been there – there was a couch and a scratched coffee table, and a rickety looking entertainment system with a huge television set and even a VCR with a couple of VHS tapes strewn about the place. Jack had felt awed and intimidated, and the very first thing he did was check to make sure if he should take his shoes off or not. The girl didn't take her shoes off. She had just walked right into the kitchen and stuck her head into the fridge and dug around for a bit. Jack had figured he'd better go put Lola down and stop standing there like an idiot, so he had crossed the apartment and kicked open the door to the girl's room, the first door to the left right after the moth-eaten sofa.

It had been bright. Like an onslaught of color. All of the tenants who rented apartments in the Narrows knew that you could not paint your rooms – they were to stay stark white. But her room was this sky blue with yellow flowers painted all over. They'd looked a little sloppy, and Jack knew she'd probably done them herself, but to him it was like a masterpiece what she'd done with that dingy little room. Even Lola, who was still gasping in his arms, had looked around with saucer-sized eyes.

Jack had deposited his sister on the small bed right next to the only window (open wide) in the room. There was a fuzzy little potted plant sitting on the windowsill. Jack had never seen a plant like that before, and he had reached out one finger to stroke the leaves. Soft and thick, unlike any of the weedy little sprouts that popped up between the cracks in the sidewalk. Lola had reached out her arm and touched a leaf as well. It felt like it was from another planet.

"_Jack, I think – she's – an alien."_

"_Yeah . . . me too."_

She'd kicked open the door and come in with a plate full of crackers and ham slices, and a bottle of spray cheese in her other hand. She had one cracker shoved in her mouth already, and she hadn't even seemed to notice that a strange girl was lying on her bed and a strange boy with a beaten face was standing in her pretty room in dirty shoes. She had offered Lola the platter first, and Lola had reached out and taken one of the crackers with an expression of dawning idolatry on her youthful and sickly face. It was the first time that such an expression had crossed Lola's features, and it had never really left after that.

The girl had plopped herself down onto her rug. It was shaped like a huge daisy, buttery yellow with a huge green stalk and leaves and a black center. She'd reached out and slapped the ground next to her with her hand and then swallowed the crackers she had in her mouth before she ordered Jack to sit next to her and have some crackers himself. For some reason she was particularly set on crackers, that first day they had met.

Jack had lowered himself on the ground carefully and then continued to look around. Her room looked . . . normal. Like a normal kid's room. One who didn't live in the Narrows; who didn't live in a broken home. That's all the Narrows were, really – one big community, one long strand, of broken homes. Seeing her there had been like one of those activities you did in pre-school, where the teacher lined up a row of gummy bears and threw in a random gummy worm and asked which one didn't belong. She didn't belong; Jack and Lola and all the other dirty, broken children belonged, but that girl, in her crisp white shirt and her pleated skirt, did not.

"_Why are you living here?"_

"_What do you mean?"_

"_You've got nice things. And a big T.V. with a VCR and tapes and everything. And a flower rug. And you wear nice clothes; like private school clothes. Why are you living in the Narrows when you have money to buy yourself nice things?"_

"_I moved here from Metropolis. You know, that big city a state over? Well, anyway, me and my mom lived there for a long time, from when I was a baby. Mom was this real high class prostitute. She slept with all the highest businessmen and all the government officials and stuff, and they'd pay her ten thousand dollars a night to do a bunch of freaky stuff to them and keep her mouth shut about it. My dad's a Congressman. Like, in the government of the United States. He makes hundreds of thousands of dollars a year."_

"_So why are you living here, then? Why aren't you living with your dad?"_

"_Mm, well, I don't know who he is."_

"_You just said –"_

"_I know he's a Congressman, but I don't know his name or what state he's a Congressman for. He doesn't want me to know, on account of I might use it to blackmail him when I get older. For money, you know. That's what my mom does. She blackmails him for crack money."_

The girl had told him all this with a very straightforward, uncaring expression on her face, but it was her voice that captivated him – it was such a smooth voice, and it had the slightest touch of a Mid-Western accent to it. It made her seem distinguished, as if she really did come from a higher class than his own. But Jack could tell that by just looking at her – no girl from the Narrows looked like her. No girl from the Narrows had such smooth skin or such shiny hair or such blue, blue eyes.

"_See, my dad is a really important politician, but he's married. He's got some frigid old cow of a wife, I guess. And back before I was born, he'd been trying to have a baby with that wife of his. They tried and they tried and they tried but don't you know that they just could not have a baby? So the wife had a bunch of tests done on the both of them, and it turned out that she couldn't have a baby at all. Except she told him that it was _him_ that couldn't have kids. She even paid the doctor off to keep it a secret."_

"_Why?"_

"'_Cos she thought that he'd leave her if she couldn't cough up Congressman Jr. Except it backfired, because my dad felt so awful about not being able to have a kid that he got all insecure and ended up calling my mom for some comfort and company. She was real famous and beautiful back in the day, and all the billionaires wanted to buy her for a night. So she took up with him and they had this torrid, steamy affair for a long time. Dad started paying Mom to be his girl exclusive-like. He told her he couldn't have any kids and so they didn't take care not to have a baby, because he thought he couldn't have any kids, right? 'Cos of that barren cow of a wife of his."_

"_Except – she – lied, right?"_

"_Right! Want another cracker? There. All right, so anyway, when Dad found out that Mom was pregnant he got real upset and thought she was messing around with another client, but when he dug around in his medical records he found out what his wife had done. But he still couldn't go leave his ugly wife for my mom, because it'd ruin his career or whatever, running off with a high class call-girl. So he ended giving my mom a bunch of money for me and promised to keep sending it to take care of me in secret."_

The girl had sighed heavily then, and her tone had turned so remorseful that Jack had found himself leaning in towards her, he had been so absorbed in her narration.

"_But Mom was completely crazy for him, and it really made her lose it when he refused to run off with her and raise me. For a while she got on because she kept thinking that he'd come back, but every year she'd get more and more depressed, and when I was around six she got into the drugs. And she burnt up all the money Dad sent us a month. He found out what she was doing and stopped sending so much to her and only sent it to me instead. But Mom got mad because she needs her blow, and so she threatened to spill the beans and ruin him if he didn't pay her every month."_

"_He's still paying you guys money, though?"_

"_Yeah, but not enough. She keeps burning through it faster and faster. She took some fat, oily guy at the tech store to bed to get that T.V. and those videos. Dad still puts money for me directly into my bank account so she can't get at it, and he made sure I got into St. Katherine's so I can get a nice education, and he writes to me regular."_

Jack had stared at that girl in complete fascination. His mouth might have been hanging open and everything, but he didn't notice it. He couldn't remember ever hearing such a wild story. The fact that the girl was the illegitimate daughter of one of the elite made her even _more_ incredible and unreal to him.

Jack had never known anything or anyone like that girl from down the street. And neither had his sister. The things that girl said might have captivated Jack, but they completely enthralled Lola. From that day on Lola worshiped Louise Speller on bended knee. She did everything she could to be just like her, and even after she got sick she never failed to try and emulate that girl's repressed air of delicate stateliness. Jack was sure that the girl would get tired of his sister and toss her aside and never look at either of them ever again.

But that girl from down the street didn't think Lola was an annoying little copycat, and she didn't yell at her and make her cry in front of all the other kids for wearing a cheap imitation of a white daisy in her hair like the other girls would have done if it had been a copy of _their_ white daisies. That girl _liked_ Lola. She was always knocking on the door and asking for Lola to come out with her and run around with her, or else to come over and try on the new dress her dad had sent her. That girl wasn't like everyone else from the very start, because she let Lola tag along with her all the time for no other reason than the joy of her company. Not for pity, or because it made her feel good that some little kid was trailing after her – No, Lola was always treated as an equal at that girl's house. Even after she got sick. Even after her hair fell out and she went bald, and she coughed up blood all over a really expensive dancing dress that the girl's dad had just sent her. That girl treated Lola so normally it was almost like she didn't even realize that Lola was sick at all – it was like she was completely blind, deaf and dumb when it came to Lola being different.

It was something that Jack himself found increasingly impossible, but that girl did it perfectly. And Lola loved her because of it.

The girl finally stopped laughing and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. There was a smear of black eyeliner across it when it fell back to her side. She wasn't wearing the blue and grey skirt this time. She was in a pair of tattered jeans with rips at the knees and a streak of asphalt down one leg. Her hair was down and it hung around her shoulders like this mass of silky ebony vines. Jack often wondered how long it took her to comb her hair in the morning. Sometimes when he got near her his hand would get this tingling feeling in it, and he'd have this crazy desire to reach up and entangle his fingers into that thick hair of hers. He wanted to draw his fingers through it and feel the strands slip between them like silk, and maybe even bury his face into her neck and inhale deeply. He had smelled her once, by accident, when she had been doing some crazy dance with Lola and had tripped and fallen. Jack had caught her just before she wiped out, and their faces had nearly been pressed together cheek-to-cheek. She smelled like something Jack had never smelled before; something softly sweet and tantalizing. Something so drastically different from the smoggy and rancid stench of the back streets of Gotham that he had nearly felt transported to a different place.

"_What's that smell? Is that . . . strawberries?"_

"_What? My hair, you mean?"_

"_I dunno. I guess so."_

"_I think it might be my perfume. Dad sends it to me. It's violets. Smells nice, huh?"_

"_Yeah . . . it smells real nice . . ."_

"What, uh, what are you doing here?" Jack asked her. She smiled up at him again.

"I just wanted to know if you and Lola wanted to come over to my apartment." She peeked around Jack's outstretched arm and saw his dad lying with head pressed flat against the kitchen table. She leaned in so close to Jack that he thought he stopped breathing for a full five seconds because of it. He always felt like he couldn't breathe when he was around that girl. "I got a bunch of new shirts for Lola. And uh . . . something for you, too."

"Wh – What do you have for me?" Jack cleared his throat, embarrassed that his voice had caught in front of her. She didn't seem to notice. She just kept smiling up at him, and winked in response to his question.

"It's a surprise. You don't want to ruin your surprise, do you?"

"I guess not." In reality, Jack wished she'd just tell him now. There was something about waiting, even for the five minutes or so it'd take to walk to her place, that made Jack antsy and generally uneasy. He hated waiting – he liked things to be impulsive and quick.

"Good. Get your sister and come with me." She looked past Jack to his father, who was breathing wheezily. "Unless you've got better plans?"

Jack scowled in the direction of his dozing father and then snapped, "No. Come on, Lola. We're going out."

"Oh, oh! Let me put on my shoes! Wait, this one won't go on . . . just a little . . . okay! There, I'm ready, let's go!"

Lola trotted after the two of them excitedly, talking so fast that Jack didn't have time to get a word in edgewise. He didn't really care, because he wasn't sure he could find anything interesting or worthwhile to talk about at the moment anyway; to him, it was enough that the girl was still walking beside him, their hands brushing every couple of steps.

"Jesus Christ, Jack, you're getting tall."

That girl said 'Jesus Christ' a lot. He'd asked her why, once, and she told him it was because she went to a Catholic school, and you weren't allowed to say things like that there, so to all of her friends it was sort of like this forbidden swear word, except not really. Jack couldn't think what she'd sound like actually swearing because she never really did it. Sometimes he imagined what it'd be like – if her voice would get lower or more caressing, or about how the way her lips would look when she uttered the word – and for some reason the thoughts made his face grow hot.

Jack drug one hand over the back of his neck and mumbled, "Yeah, I guess so."

He hoped she hadn't noticed because his jeans were getting too short for his legs, which were fast becoming as long as the single flickering lamp post that stood in the street outside. Lola was the one to first make this comparison and somehow it had struck Jack as extremely accurate. He hoped desperately that he would stop growing; it would be hard to imagine that girl wanting to walk beside him with their hands brushing when he was so tall she barely came up to his kneecaps.

"How tall are you, anyway?"

Jack shrugged and replied, "Five-eleven or something. It's not that tall."

"You're sixteen. And still growing. And you were shorter than me like, just last month. I bet you're going to be way over six feet. Like, maybe you'll get to seven feet. And you'll become this famous basketball player because you only have to lift up your hand and drop the ball in the basket, so you always score."

Jack hid his smile. "I don't turn sixteen until November. And it wasn't last month, it was last year. And I can't play basketball."

"He always trips over his feet," Lola added, and Jack cast her a dark glare. "What? You do!"

The girl laughed lightly and her hand brushed against Jack's again. He nearly tripped right in front of her. Sometimes he thought that her laugh was like a thousand tiny bells blowing around in the wind; like silver wind chimes that people in the Palisades had hanging from their front porches.

There was silence as the three of them made their way out into the street. Several kids Jack knew from class were milling around, most of them sitting in clumps and smoking cigarettes and hooting at some of the girls who were walking by in too-tight jeans and shirts that showed their stomachs even though it was autumn and getting too cold for those types of clothes. That girl from down the street never wore clothes that were especially tight – the jeans she had on now were loose and she had a frayed jacket on over her shirt. She didn't slather on her makeup, either, and she never cared if it got smudged during the day. Sometimes Jack was able to reach over and brush out a little clump of mascara from where it stuck to her eyelash because she never paid attention to keeping her eyes lined perfectly. He loved any excuse to reach out and brush his fingers across her skin.

"I think it's sort of crazy how old we're all getting. I mean, Lola is thirteen already. That's nuts. When are you gonna get a boyfriend, girl?"

Jack made a noise of disgust and cut off Lola's half-formed response. "She doesn't need a boyfriend. Who's she gonna get around here, anyway? Look at all those losers."

Jack gestured to the clump of boys who had turned their attention to that girl. They didn't leer at her; they watched her with a hooded sort of calculation that made Jack thoroughly uncomfortable and furious. If they had called out suggestions to her or complimented her on her assets Jack might not have cared as much. Or, he believed he wouldn't have cared as much. They called out to all the girls, just because they thought they had to. But with her it was different. With her, it was like they were breaking out of their expected routine to actually _look_ at her. The way they watched her . . . it was like they were drinking in her innocence, dirtying her just by their intense gazes, which radiated a sort of heat that made Jack's skin crawl.

He hated it. He hated it so much that he wanted to go over to them with his fists flying and beat them until their faces split open and he could feel their warm blood on his knuckles.

The girl laughed, oblivious to the dark scenarios running through the mind of the boy standing next to her. "Oh, you're just being a protective older brother. There are a few all right boys around here. That Jimmy Nolan is pretty nice. Kind of a gentleman."

"Jimmy Nolan is too old. And he's not a gentlemen. You know he spits all the time, 'cuz he's always smoking. That's disgusting. You don't want a guy who spits all over you, Lola. The least you can do is hold out for someone who keeps their saliva in their mouth."

That girl reached out and gripped Jack's arm as she laughed and Jack saw, through his astonishment, that the boys sitting on the street and on the steps of various tenant buildings were shooting him dirty looks. But Jack didn't care. He knew he had a right to that girl more than they did; they could look at her all they wanted, but it wasn't _them_ that she invited into her room, and it wasn't _them_ that she had a surprise waiting for. She wasn't for them.

"I think Jimmy Nolan is pretty cute." Lola looked up to that girl with a sort of questioning wonder on her pale face. "You don't think he'd actually like me, do ya? I mean . . . I haven't got hair . . ."

Lola ran her hand absentmindedly over her scarf-covered head, obviously bald beneath of the thin, bejeweled piece of cloth.

"But your cancer is pretty much in remission now, isn't it? So you'll have hair soon. Besides, boys shouldn't care if a girl doesn't have hair so long as she's pretty like you are."

"Don't talk about that. . ." Jack said in a low voice. He didn't like it when they mentioned Lola's illness. He didn't like it when anybody talked about it or named it outright, and he especially didn't like it when that girl did it so casually that she almost made it seem like it wasn't a big deal.

"Don't be such a spoilsport, Jack." The girl smiled brightly at Lola, her hand still resting on Jack's arm. His heart was beating faster than usual and he couldn't stop glancing down at the way her fingers splayed across his skin. It was cold outside, and Jack didn't have a jacket, but the skin just beneath her fingers was burning hot.

Jack said nothing, felt it was almost impossible to say anything without his voice breaking and coming out in a high-pitched squeak. They arrived at the girl's building and still her hand was on his arm; they trotted up the stairs side-by-side and still that girl did not let go. It wasn't until they reached her door and she leaned forward to fog up her number and then polish it with the cuff of her jacket that she finally released him, and Jack felt a meshed together sense of relief and terrible disappointment. His skin prickled as the cold, stale air of the tenant building connected with his warm flesh – almost like it was crying out at the loss of her contact.

"Where's your mom?" Lola asked.

Lola was exceedingly interested in Ms. Speller; Jack figured it was because Lola had never actually spoken to a real live prostitute before. Usually Jack never let her near the ones that strolled around the corners of the Narrows. They were dirty and desperate and you couldn't trust them. And that girl's mother was no different; even that girl knew that. But Lola was young and fanciful, and she believed that because Louise was a good person her mother must be a good person too.

Jack didn't like to point out the fact that that would mean that their father had to be a good person because Lola was a good person, and that didn't make any sense because their father _wasn't_ a good person. Jack was one for practicality, but over time he had learned to let things go when it came to his sister. He let her examine Ms. Speller from a distance, careful to put himself between the two of them whenever the woman got too close.

"She's out looking for clients I think. Or else hunting down some blow." The girl shook her head and pulled out her silver chain, unlocked her door, and then nearly forgot and went swinging in with it – Jack stopped her at the very last second by reaching out and grabbing hold of her wrist before she went to push the door open. She'd been doing the same thing for nearly four years and she still never learned. It exasperated him to no end, but she didn't seem to care – if he was doing such a stupid thing over and over again for four years, it'd drive him insane. But that girl didn't care about anything, practically. Jack had only known her to have one pet peeve, and funnily enough, it was something that he did that drove her up the wall.

He'd been sitting on her couch watching a movie with his arm flung out over the side and resting on the wooden end table. The movie was one of Lola's favorites, some black and white film about Christmas and angels and wishes, and Jack had watched it so many times that he grew bored very quickly. It was all too sugar-coated for him to begin with, but to have to watch it time after time . . . . it had driven him nuts. He remembered he had been sitting just like that on her couch, with Lola on the opposite end and that girl in the middle, but leaning slightly towards him like she was being pulled in by some orbit that existed around his body or something, and he was so distracted by the way her chest rose and fell as she breathed that he hadn't even noticed he was tapping his fingers against the table.

Her rebuke had come out of nowhere, in a voice dripping such annoyance that he hardly recognized it as hers – that girl was _never_ annoyed.

"_Jesus Christ! Would you _stop_ that tapping?"_

"_What?"_

"_You, over there drumming your fingers on my side table. You've been doing it for like, twenty minutes. How does that not drive you crazy?"_

"_I don't even realize I'm doing it . . ."_

"_Well _I_ do. So stop it, or I'm going to wrap your hands in mittens and then duct-tape them together so you can't do anything except sit with your hands in your lap."_

"_Oooh-kay."_

Jack had given the table one last tap and then pulled his hands into his lap. But after about ten minutes she'd had to yell at him again, because he was doing it on his knee. And she still yelled at him for it because he couldn't seem to stop himself, and because he didn't realize he was doing it in the first place he couldn't try to train himself not to. Jack didn't really care about her not liking it – in a way he enjoyed when she got angry with him. He liked to see the flush rise in her cheeks.

The girl opened her door wide and Lola rushed in first, kicking off her shoes and making herself at home immediately. That girl stood next to the door and leaned against the frame, her eyes turned upwards to Jack's face. For the briefest of instants Jack felt rooted to the spot, and then in a flash of heat even quicker than the immobility he had felt, he had the desperate desire to take a step forward and press his body against hers so that their forms were completely melded neck to feet, and press his mouth against hers.

"You coming, Jack?"

Jack blinked and then forced himself to smile at her, surprised to note that for once she was not smiling back at him.

* * *

**A/N:** Whoa, long. This is the last of the major flashback interruptions - the rest will take place mainly in the present. I wanted to break the chapter up but couldn't find a suitable place to split it in two, so I figured I had to keep it as is. So . . . Boring? A disappointment? I hope not. Hopefully somebody made it all the way through. And of course I have to express my immeasurable surprise that four people were interested enough to leave lovely reviews for the first chapter! What a wonderful surprise. A huge thanks to those four: **Ignatius J. Reilly, theatre-gypsy, peacefulgrace**, and **Misplaced Levity.** You four are the reason this second chapter is being posted!

And for those who have continued reading, what say you about this chapter? I'd love to know.

: D

P.S - Just in case the idea pops into anyone's head, Louise is NOT the child/niece/sister/second-cousin-three-times-removed-on-his-great-aunt-Shirley's-side of Bruce Wayne. Her father is nameless and faceless and will play a very menial background part in the story. : )


	3. Chapter 3

Jack wasn't sure when it was that he had started thinking of that girl in _that_ way. It seemed to have happened overnight. In fact, a part of him was sure that it _had_ happened overnight. He seemed to have a recollection of going to sleep one night fresh from a tryst over at her house at the age of thirteen, and then going to sleep and . . . and then everything had gotten very blurry and rushed, and he had the vaguest remembrance of being half-awake yet still absorbed in his dreams. He remembered panting, and being wrapped up in his bed sheets, and being unbearably hot but unable to cool himself down. He remembered that in his dream _she_ had been there, and her hands had been everywhere, all over him and everywhere at once.

Most of him didn't even understand _why_ he was dreaming of her touching him, and though he knew all about sex and the schematics of the act he had never been particularly interested in exploring it with anyone. He'd been preoccupied with Lola's illness, and the fact that his dad was getting drunker than ever and as a result was constantly beating him, though as time passed Jack was slowly learning how to defend himself and fight back.

He hadn't expected to go to sleep one night and suddenly just . . . _want_ things he had never even craved before. And he hadn't expected that girl from down the street, the one who drove him insane half the time he was with her, to be in his dreams and making him feel so . . . so . . . he didn't even think he knew how to explain how it felt, that first time. He only knew that he had never, ever wanted the dream to end, and he was more frustrated than he'd ever been that her fingers and hands seemed to be everywhere and yet never reach just _there_. But in the end it hadn't mattered, because her hands everywhere else had been enough, more than enough, to make Jack's entire body tense and then tremble as his skin caught fire and his mind swam dizzily.

He'd woken up fully as the feeling had subsided, consciousness sneaking over him as slowly as the shudders had faded from his limbs and mind. Nothing could make him forget the disconcerting feeling of reality creeping into his brain and alerting him to what had really occurred, and not what he had thought was happening. The stifling silence of a sleeping household, and the way his chest had still been heaving with breathless gasps, had made him feel obnoxiously loud and conspicuous; he had been sure his entire family was aware of what he had been dreaming, and how his body had reacted to it. But nobody could be heard giggling through the door, as Jack had been sure Lola would have been had she known; and his father had not come to kick him around with disgust twisting his mouth, as Jack was certain he would have if he had known.

That had been the beginning, but it hadn't been the only time and it hadn't been the worst, or he supposed, the most intense, time. In a way Jack despised himself for thinking the things he thought, and he considered his body as almost traitorous for reacting so readily to the merest hint of violet scented perfume or glossy black curls brushing over his skin. Yet he couldn't help it; it polluted his mind like a mental disease, growing steadily worse and more perverse as time went on. If she knew some of the things he thought about her; if she had any indication of those nights when he went home and bit he lip till he bled, thinking about her, fantasizing about her lips and her hands and her neck and her naked thighs and her naked chest and her naked _everything_ . . . if she had any idea, he'd never be able to look her in the face again.

He tried to limit the amount of conscious time he spent dwelling on those things, but he could never escape it in his dreams, and even if he somehow managed to abstain from giving in to that aching insistence for release that kept him awake so many long nights, he wouldn't be able to stop the dreams from coming. And he could never stop himself from coming, either.

"Hey, I need to talk to you." Her voice was warm against his neck. He didn't know why she had decided that she needed to lean in so close to him, so close that her chest was brushing against his arm and her hair was falling in a curtain of sweet-smelling strands onto his shoulder, but he was past the point of caring. Just like those nights when he could not stop his body from succumbing to that indecent desire he felt for her, he could not stop his conscious self from leaning into her breathlessly.

"Okay." He stood with the bundle she had given him still clutched in his hand and then looked over at Lola, who was twirling in front of the full length mirror the girl had set up in her corner, examining the dress that hung on her rail-thin body in a shockingly flattering way. "Just me?"

"Yeah . . ." she took his hand and drug him from the room without alerting Lola to their departure, and Jack felt his heart leap into his chest. It was very rare for that girl to drag him somewhere on his own – it was always the three of them; her, him, and Lola. There were a thousand half-formed thoughts running through his mind at top-speed as he pondered over what she could possibly need to speak to him in private about. It must be something secret, something that only concerned the two of them . . . A selfish part inside of him wished that there were more things that only concerned the two of them.

She pulled Jack into the bathroom and then shut the door behind them and stood shifting her feet and twisting her hands in front of her in a very uncharacteristic display of shyness.

"Uh, what – what did you need to talk about?"

She looked up at him with those eyes of hers – troubled, this time. Her gaze flickered down to the bundle he clutched absentmindedly in his hands.

"Do – do you like them? I didn't know if they were your size but . . ."

Jack looked down at the bundle in his hands and nodded. She had presented him with a dark sweatshirt with a picture of a many-armed deity sitting crossed-legged on the ground next to a tree, each hand holding an apple.

"_From the first time we met, remember? I saw it at this store in the city when I went to buy some new clothes and . . . it made me think of you and smile."_

He didn't tell her about the feeling of elation he had felt swelling up inside of his chest at the indication that she thought of him fondly while they were apart. She had handed him two more shirts, a plain white one, blinding in its cleanliness, paired with a striped button-down shirt in a light orange color, a shade he never wore.

"_I think it'll go really nice with your hair and skin . . . I know you prefer like, black and blue and all those colors that remind you of bruises or whatever, but I thought you might like a change."_

He didn't care about the change – what he cared about was the faint scent of violet that clung to the fibers of those clothes in his hands. That's what he cared about, and that's why he answered her the way he did.

"I love it. Of course. Of course I love it."

"Good. That's good." She pushed her hair back from her face and then sighed deeply, her cheeks puffing out. Jack realized then by the look on her face and the way she was practically dancing in her discomfort, that she was not in the bathroom with him to deliver good news.

"What is it? What are you hiding?" Jack demanded, his fingers clutching the bundle tightly. He imagined that she was going to tell him about a boyfriend, or that she didn't want to be friends with him anymore.

"Jack . . ."

"Just tell me. Just tell me, all right? I don't like playing these stupid games."

The girl took another deep breath and then said, "It's about your dad . . ."

Jack's father. Jack's father, who had been out so often lately that Jack was, mercifully, almost able to pretend he didn't have one. His father, who had actually gone out and gotten himself a job for once, which accounted for his late hours and his absence at the dinner table. The presence of an actual dinner was something that Jack was able to boast about for the first time in years. His father was still drunk when he came home, and he still knocked Jack around just as relentlessly as usual, but he was around much less to do it. Jack figured that this was as much of an improvement as he could hope for.

"What about him?" Jack asked, guardedly. Whatever she was about to tell him, he knew it wasn't good, and part of him didn't want to know. Things were going good right then – Lola seemed to be getting better, his father was working part-time somewhere and managing to actually keep the job, and they had had meatloaf for dinner the night before. It wasn't the best, and it was nothing like the food that girl could make whenever Jack and Lola used to get really hungry, but it was something.

"He . . . well, he's been around here a lot . . . lately." The girl looked down at her bare feet with chipped polish on her nails, and Jack knew she was biting her lip behind that curtain of dark hair.

"What do you mean, around here? Why would he be around your place?"

"Oh, Jack . . . he's working down at the docks, selling drugs. My mom, she hooked him up. She did it in exchange for . . . cocaine."

Jack shook his head blankly, furious at the way she was halting her words and at how vague she was being. He didn't even know what she was trying to tell him. So his father sold drugs – he had lied to them, but at least he was making money. At least he was doing _something_ to provide for his family. Was he supposed to be upset about this? Who _didn't_ know somebody who was a drug dealer, around here?

"So? What, your mom got my dad a job and she expects free blow for her efforts. So what?"

"No, Jack . . . he gives her free drugs for her . . . for her services. He's been over here nearly every night after he gets off the streets. I hear them come in and I hear them . . . they . . . they go into her room and . . . well, you know what she does."

Jack licked his lips and stared at her, more interested in the way her face had turned a brilliant shade of crimson than by the information she had just conveyed to him. It was not particularly shocking that his father would be fooling around on his mom. Though he liked his mother more than his father, he couldn't say he really cared where his dad decided to spend the night, or who with. _He_ wasn't going to make trouble about something like that.

He laughed softly and then said, "Oh. All right, I guess . . . I guess that'd be upsetting to some people."

The girl looked up at him with reproving eyes and Jack turned his smile into a frown and tried to look concerned about what she had told him. He was confused by how serious she was making things – she had grown up with her mother and she knew that she slept with all sorts of married men. Her own father had been married when she was conceived. Just because it was his father this time shouldn't make anything different.

"Listen, I don't give a damn what that bastard does. You shouldn't either. This can't be new to you . . ." Jack reached out and leaned against her sink, drumming his fingers against the white porcelain as he watched her bite her lip. He wondered what it would feel like to be the one capturing her bottom lip in between his teeth.

"I'm not. I knew you wouldn't care about it. But I figured you should know because . . . well, it's your dad, you know? And Lola . . . she might catch on eventually. She's real interested in my mom –"

"Well then it'd probably be good for her to see her as she is – a filthy bag bride," Jack interrupted. "So what if she finds out? She's okay right now. She's thirteen, not five. And I don't think she'd care either, to be honest. It's not like our mom and dad have ever been . . . you know, '_I Love Lucy_' or something . . ."

"You're one to talk," the girl protested. "Getting all indignant when I even _mentioned_ Lola having a boyfriend."

"She doesn't need a boyfriend," Jack hissed at her. The girl crossed her arms and rolled her big blue eyes in exasperation. "But if there were any good guys around here, then maybe I'd be okay with it. What – Who around here is good enough for her? Hm?"

"You're never going to think anybody is good enough for her." Her words had the appearance of annoyance, but there was a softness in that girl's pretty face that made Jack's anger melt away. All the talk of Lola having a boyfriend, which was one of Jack's least favorite things to think about after that girl herself getting a boyfriend, seemed meaningless in light of the way she was looking up at him. It became very apparent, all of a sudden, that they were standing alone in a tiny bathroom.

Jack swallowed, aware of her eyes as they followed the slight bob of his Adam's apple. He was somewhat glad of that bundle of clothing in his hands – he would have had no idea what to do with them if they had been free, though he knew what he _wanted_ to do with them. He wanted to reach forward and run his fingertips over her skin; maybe over her lips and down her neck until he could rest his palm against her chest and feel the steady beat of her heart.

"I think you're right, you know." She was speaking so quietly that Jack could hardly hear her, with a voice so smooth he almost wanted to close his eyes and fall asleep to it. "There aren't any good guys around here. They're all . . . dirty, or violent, or crude, or downright stupid. They don't care about anything except sex and drugs and themselves. Sometimes I think that the only good guy in the Narrows is . . . is you."

She reached out one slim-fingered hand and rested it against his stomach, stroking tiny absentminded circles over his abdomen.

His throat seemed two sizes smaller than usual; his tongue abnormally dry. But he couldn't just stand there and say nothing, and he couldn't lean forward and kiss her like he really wanted. So he tried to play it casual, praying she couldn't see him blushing.

"I'm not . . . . I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say I'm all that good."

Her tiny circles were growing in circumference and even branching out into squiggly lines and haphazard shapes that took no form but made Jack's skin contract beneath the thin fabric of his tee-shirt. He longed to breathe out deeply and lean into her touches, to relax completely, to give himself over to her wholly and let her run her hands over him as much as she wanted. But he stood tense and coiled, waiting for what she would do, captivated by the way her eyes seemed vaguely unfocused as she looked up at him.

"You are. You care about people, Jack. You'll always be good."

Jack didn't want to tell her the truth. The truth that he didn't care about anybody except for Lola and her. The truth that the entire city could burn to the ground and he wouldn't shed one tear so long as his sister and that girl came out of it all right. He wanted her to keep believing that he was good, that he didn't sometimes imagine burning the entire place down_ himself_ sometimes . . . he liked that she saw him the way she did, even if it wasn't who he really was. A part of him hoped that if she believed in him enough he might just become the person she thought he was.

Her finger nails were trailing lazily up his chest and over his neck, coming to a temporary halt at the softest part of his throat where his pulse beat furiously against his heated skin. A low breath escaped him, shaky and repressed. Jack didn't want to breathe for fear of shattering whatever sort of moment this was – he was suspended in a sort of timeless delay, unsure as to whether he should take charge or wait for her to make a move, and partially unsure if he was misreading the entire situation altogether. Maybe he was imagining that girl's fingertips pressed against his pulse; maybe she wasn't really leaning into him with her head tilted up and her lips slack and her eyelids fluttering closed. The bundle of clothing slipped from his hands and landed in a pile on the tiled floor.

Jack figured it was a mixture of the smell of her – the scent of violets paired with the sweetness of her breath – and the feeling of her body heat as she brushed up against him, that sealed the deal. His mouth came down on hers almost greedily, and although he'd never kissed anyone before he couldn't be bothered by worries about where to turn his head or what to do with his tongue – the softness of her lips, the quiet sigh that came from her when he was finally able to entangle his fingers in her hair, and the taste of her on his tongue as he trailed it over her bottom lip drove everything else away.

Except for the crashes that came seconds later, a tinkling of breaking glass followed shortly by the distinctive thump of a thin body crumpling to the ground. The girl pulled away abruptly, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth and looking to the bathroom door with such an expression of confusion that Jack was sure she hardly remembered that Lola had been in the apartment with them. He knew – he hadn't remembered, either.

She was the one who opened the door, but Jack strode past her and burst into her room first. He was the first to see Lola lying on the ground like a broken marionette whose strings had just been cut; he was the first to see the scarlet blood slipping down her nose and over her cheek.

"But she's supposed to be getting better. She's supposed to be . . . in remission, isn't she? This . . . maybe she's just . . ."

"Dying." Jack knelt down and pulled Lola's limp body into his lap, wiping the blood away from her nose with the back of his hand. Sticky scarlet smeared across his arms and he heard that girl gasp and scramble around for something else for Jack to use instead of his bare skin. As if he was bothered by the blood, or as if he should be. "She's dying, you know that."

The girl shoved an old shirt at Jack, who used it to keep the blood from pooling up and blocking Lola's air passages. "Don't say that, Jack. S-she could get better, you don't know. She was all right for a few months, there."

Jack said nothing, and that girl fell silent, her ragged breathing the only sound in the stark silence of her room. Jack noticed that there were spots of blood on that pretty yellow daisy rug, the one that had been there ever since the first time he had stepped foot in this room. Somehow he didn't feel sorry about it – it was almost fitting for it to be stained. The way that girl's life was stained by the two of them. Lola and him, splattering dots of darkness all over her perfect, buttery-yellow world . . . it was hard to believe that he'd been kissing her just minutes before, and now he was kneeling on her floor with his bleeding sister in his arms and no idea what to do about it.

"We need to call a doctor, Jack. She needs to go to the hospital."

"With what money? For the ambulance and the procedures they'll do just to tell us she's sick and she's not getting any better. . ."

"We can't just let her bleed."

"You got a better idea?"

The girl twisted her hands in front of her and opened her mouth to say something just as Lola coughed and groaned. Her eyelids fluttered and then opened, and one thin hand lifted up to rest wearily against her blood-smeared cheek.

"I'm – all right."

The girl rushed forward and fell to her knees in a move more graceful than Jack could pull off even if he practiced. "Lola, you're not all right. You need to go to the hospital."

"Just a – nose – bleed," Lola rasped, wiping at her nose. She looked up at Jack imploringly. "Water?"

"I'll get it," that girl offered quickly. Jack half expected her to demand that they all have some crackers, too. She slipped from the room noiselessly and Jack heard the faucet rattle and screech as it always did when anybody turned it on.

Lola looked up at Jack and wheezed, "Are you – gonna – marry Louise – Jack?"

Jack thought of the way her hair had felt slipping through his fingers and for a minute the notion of being able to do that – kiss her like that – every day, was incredibly appealing. But Jack hated thinking about things so far away, hated making plans when the only possible outcome was to have them disappointed and crushed. So he looked down at his sister's face, so gruesomely smeared with blood, and replied, "No. Why would you ask a stupid thing like that?"

"I thought – you might – be kissing – out there."

"So what if we were? Doesn't mean we're gonna get married."

"But –"

"You just be quiet and focus on not gushing blood. Think you can do that?" Jack cut her off with an annoyed scowl, wiping the fast-drying blood from his forearms with the shirt that girl had given him.

He remembered the first time she had started bleeding. It had been a year after she'd been diagnosed and Jack had partially believed that she'd get better. Even though he knew they were poor and couldn't afford much treatment the idea that his kid sister would just die one day felt a little unreal to him. He figured that even though she bruised too easily and got winded just walking up the steps to their apartment, she'd be fine eventually. He had thought she'd grow out of it – like a crazy penchant for eating chalk, or something like that. Like he had grown out of loving radishes, a phase that had lasted two weeks and then disappeared as quickly as it had come.

But that first time she had bled, that was when he knew Lola was going to die. They had been sitting together, Lola and him and that girl, of course, who always seemed to be around when personal and private things happened. Lola was drinking a glass of orange juice and she had started spluttering into the glass. Jack had reached over absentmindedly and slapped her on her back. He hadn't really paid much attention to it, because she'd just been coughing, that was all. Everybody coughs. He hadn't paid attention until that girl had whispered that swear word of hers, and Jack had looked over to see a cloud of deep red streaking through the yellowish-orange of the juice in Lola's cup. When he had pulled it away there was blood all down her lips and chin and she was still coughing, and if it wasn't for that girl Jack would probably have just sat there and watched Lola bleed until she shriveled up like a prune and fell to the ground dead. But that girl had rushed into the kitchen and ruined a towel on Lola's face, mopping up the blood like a nurse trained for that sort of thing and not a thirteen year old who had only met the girl bleeding all over her dish rag the year before.

They traded off like that, that girl and him. Over the years, every time Lola bled unexpectedly. Sometimes it was Jack who found himself rooted to the spot, just staring, and sometimes, like today, it was that girl who brought her fingers to her mouth and gnawed in a flurry of fear and uncertainty. Neither of them ever got angry at the other for being so inept, because they knew that the next time it happened, wherever it might be, the other might be caught off guard and unready.

She came back into the room and knelt down again, water sloshing over the brim of the glass she held in her hand and darkening the daisy rug. Lola reached out one shaky hand to grab the glass herself, but it took the both of them to help her drink while Jack held her upright.

"I'm – fine," Lola said defiantly. "Just – let me – take a nap?"

Jack didn't really want her to go to sleep. It always made him uneasy when she did, after an episode like this one. He often wondered if it would be this time, this nap, that she would never wake up from. It was almost certain to happen one of these times.

"You really need to –" that girl persisted.

"Take a – nap," Lola interrupted. "Help – me – Jack."

Jack ignored the girl's disapproving look and half carried his sister over to the bed that sat by the partially ajar window. It was only really closed during the dead of winter, when things got too cold to leave the window even a millimeter open. But even then she wasn't happy about closing it. If she had enough blankets and the ability to hold her breath underneath a stack of covers Jack was sure she'd leave the window open all year round. She had told him that she liked the fresh air and that one day she'd move somewhere warm, in the country, where she could leave the window open constantly, and smell night-blooming jasmine when she went to sleep. You couldn't smell night-blooming jasmine in the Narrows. Usually there was a smell of rotting trash and a poor plumbing system. The only flowery scent in the Narrows hung on the strands of that girl's hair.

Lola settled herself into the bed and Jack handed her the shirt, in case she started bleeding again. That girl had gone through so many blankets because of Lola's constant bleeding that it was hardly anything new. Jack sort of hoped Lola would bleed on them again. Usually when that happened that girl would give Jack the ruined sheets and blankets, because his family was too poor to buy new ones. He would never forget the first time that she gave him her old bedspread, fresh and clean except for the large rusty brown stain that discolored one corner.

"_I figure that you can use it during the winter, you know? Since you sleep in that hole of a room with no heating vent. It's amazing you're not a popsicle, by now. But anyway, I know you hate things going to waste just because they got some blood on them. I'd use them myself but . . ."_

But she knew he needed blankets anyway, so she always gave them to him. And they smelled like her. They smelled like that violet perfume her dad sent her constantly, her signature scent. They smelled like springtime even in the dead cold of winter. He didn't care that they were girl sheets, and he didn't care that when his dad saw them he beat the hell out of him for acting like a faggot – they _smelled_ like her. She had _slept_ on them. The sheets had been wrapped around her body, around her legs and arms and her waist. He didn't care how much his dad raged about faggots, or him being one. It was worth it to go to sleep smelling her and pretending that she had only just climbed out of bed for a moment, but would be crawling back in at any time.

That girl always bought Lola new blankets, real thick ones that smelled like the store they'd come from, up in the city. But she never gave Jack new ones – she always gave him the stained ones, the ones that she ripped right off of her mattress. The ones that smelled like her.

"I'm – fine. I – won't – bleed – on the sheets." The last three words came out in a rush of breathy air, and Jack lifted his eyes up to stare into his sister's defiant face. "You think – I will – but I'm – fine."

"I wasn't thinking anything. Here's your water." Jack set the half empty glass on the windowsill and then snapped it closed as a cold draft blew in. The girl didn't object, for once. "If you feel like you're about to have an attack or something, just . . . I dunno. Knock the glass over. Bang on the window."

"You're sure you're all right, Lola?" that girl asked from behind Jack. Her voice sounded more even and under control, and her arms were folded across her chest, her nails far from biting distance.

"_Yes_," Lola sighed heavily, and then buried her head under the blankets in annoyance, ending the conversation. Jack snorted with irritation and amusement and then turned and left the room. There was a moments' pause before he heard that girl's soft footsteps follow behind him, and the click of her bedroom door as she closed it.

"Jack, she needs to go to the hospital." She glared up at him in resolve. He wished he could just kiss her again, like he had been doing before Lola had fainted. But the moment was gone, now, and the determination in her eyes told him that she wanted to argue.

"Listen, what don't you understand? We. Have. No. Money."

"Money! God, why is everything always, _always_, about money?" She flung her hands down to her sides and clenched her thin fingers into a ball.

Jack tried to keep himself from smiling at this burst of feminine anger. "I'm not the one who made the rules. I'm not the one who says that it's about money. But it is. All those idiot corporations with their trading and bonds and whatever the hell they have and do . . . they make the rules. They decide that it's money that controls everything. Not me."

That girl said nothing. Jack was pretty sure she didn't know what to say to that, because of course he knew he was right. It _was_ those businessmen, those politicians like her absentee father, who decided that girls like Lola, poor girls from a bad home, didn't deserve the same care as girls with parents who didn't have drinking problems and who didn't work two jobs as a grocer and a late night telemarketer selling toner. Lola was dying because they didn't have enough money. And it wasn't fair.

"You get some from the Wayne Organization . . ." that girl began, her voice wavering. "Jack, isn't there any left?"

"No. Her treatment sucked it all up. It's gone. There was only so much delegated to each patient and she's over her quota. She's run out of her dollop of good will. She didn't get better in the allotted time period; needed more than what they offered. So that's it for her. She'll die. A lost cause."

His voice was biting and bitter, and that girl winced as she heard it. Jack knew that girl hated it when he sounded like this.

"_It makes me feel like you're slipping away. Like you're becoming like all of those . . . those angry-at-the-world protesters who don't know why they're yelling and picketing but keep on doing it because they just want to hurt _someone_."_

Jack didn't want to tell her that he felt that described him pretty well. He wished he could find a way to make those people, those people with their comfortable and worriless lives, hurt. He wanted them to _writhe_ with pain. The way Lola writhed with pain sometimes, when it was a really bad day.

"Well then we need money. We need to find a way to get money." That girl bit her lip and then said, "We could invent something. Something everyone needs and would buy, and we'd make millions."

"Right. Uh . . . you work on that. I'll just get a job, in the meantime."

"Oh, well, of course. And . . . and my dad. He can give me some money. I can ask him for some. A . . . a thousand a month extra, maybe. I'll tell him that I need more books or something. Will that help?"

A thousand a month wouldn't help much, not if Lola was really getting sick again. Not if she would need more treatments every month. Treatments that cost tens of thousands of dollars. The Wayne Organization had donated millions to the hospitals in the Narrows to care for underprivileged patients, but there was only so much to go around, and, as the Chief of Medicine told Jack and his mother the last time Lola had been at the hospital, _"It's not fair to take money from other children when they could be helped by it and Lola has already had more than her share and is unlikely to . . . recover."_

Choosing. They were choosing which lives meant more than the others. Some shitty chief of medicine who didn't even have enough smarts to get into a real hospital. _She_ was the one who decided his sister wasn't worth saving. It was sick that it was allowed to happen; that somebody so unrelated could make that decision for a person. That they could be allowed to delegate who lived and who died. It made him wish that he could twist things around and show them how unjust it was, how perverse they were to believe that choosing one patient over the other was any different than choosing which random person to shoot in the head. Completely random; a choice made by a total stranger. Just the same. Except they considered anyone who did the latter as evil, and themselves as gods and entitled to make such a decision. They were wrong.

"Sure. I guess that'd help."

"Good. Good, and I'll get a job. I think that they're hiring at the laundry place down the street. Where will you work, Jack?"

Jack shrugged carelessly and shoved his hands into his pockets. The left one was bottomless and he could feel a slice of skin against his fingertips. "Maybe at the docks. You know, unloading boxes of stuff from the ships."

They fell silent, that girl nodding her head for a ridiculously long time and then picking at her ragged cuticles. Jack didn't bite his nails, but that girl gnawed at hers whenever she got uncomfortable or worried. He liked them when they were grown out and shiny, but they rarely got that way anymore. He guessed she was nearly always worried or uncomfortable these days, which, in a way, made him sort of sad.

All at once Jack knew that the both of them were thinking back to before Lola had fainted, back in her tiny bathroom, when they had kissed for the first time. He wondered suddenly if she had ever kissed anyone before. It had _seemed_ like she'd known what to do. She went to an all girl's school, and he never saw her hanging out with other boys than him, but . . .

"We . . . we should just, probably . . . I mean . . ." She tore at her pinky nail with her fingers, her forehead crinkling in the middle in confusion. "I mean . . ."

"We kissed," Jack said simply. The girl looked up with wide eyes.

"I know." She squinted her eyes at his face, like she was trying to read his mind or something. She wouldn't have found much, even if she could. The only thing he was thinking of was what it'd be like to kiss her again, and if she'd ever snuck around with some boy without him knowing. There was a knot twisting in his gut tighter and tighter every time he thought about her and some other kid. "So what – what does that mean?"

Jack had never taken the time to analyze what it meant. It meant they'd kissed, that was all. And that obviously meant that they liked each other, at least enough to want to taste each other's spit, which was pretty much the height of liking somebody, in Jack's opinion. He'd certainly never had the desire to taste anyone else's. Not even once, with anyone other than her. The fact that he'd love to taste _more_ than just her spit – like, say, every inch of her smooth skin – was another issue altogether.

"I don't know. Nothing. It means we wanted to kiss and so we did. And if we want to again, we will. Right?"

"I . . . right. Sure. I guess we will do that." She looked away from him and seemed to be more confused than ever, though it seemed she had stopped trying to crack open his skull and examine his brain just by using the power of her mind.

"Have you kissed a guy before?" Jack demanded abruptly. She stopped chewing on her thumb nail to stare up at him with an expression of wonder on her face.

"Why, did I do it wrong?" she blurted out, and then blushed. "I – uh – no. I haven't. I mean, one kid kissed me on the cheek when I was ten. But then he ran away. It was on the playground. Before I moved here. And . . . met you."

"Oh. Good." Jack felt the knot in his stomach relax and untwine, like he had just plucked at the string that unraveled it all.

There was a long silence again, and it took a long time for that girl's cheeks to fade back to their usual pale color.

"You know, we probably ought to be more experienced than this," she said finally. There was a hint of frustrated amusement in her voice. "Most kids around here are light-years ahead of us. I mean, they're already having sex and giving blow jobs or whatever. Nearly all the girls in my grade have done it. And we're only just now kissing."

Jack cocked one eyebrow up at her and tried to act casual about having a conversation about sex with that girl, the one he dreamt about nearly every night and who he frequently pictured in various states of undress.

"I guess we ought to be. But when would we be getting more experience? I'm busy with Lola and I'm always with you. I'm never with anyone else besides you." Jack shrugged and then moved to sit down on her couch. It was fairly new, something her mother had gotten for next to nothing by jacking off some furniture guy – it didn't even have the indents in the cushions that came after you sat on it over and over again for a while, it was that new.

He wasn't sure what he'd said that was wrong, but obviously it had been something, because she immediately looked dismayed.

"Do you wish you hung around other girls?"

Jack couldn't imagine hanging around any other girl. There were no others he_ wanted_ to hang around, besides that girl. They were all slummy, and most of them wore too much cheap makeup and kept their jeans too low and their shirts too tight. And none of them, not one of them, were as pretty as that girl. Besides, they all thought he was a freak anyway because he didn't like to flirt with them and try to get into their pants like every other boy around where he lived.

"No," he replied. This time it was him who looked up at her because she was still standing. "Do _you_ wish you hung around other guys?"

Her "no" was much prompter than his was, which made his chest constrict, in a good way. Like he was being filled with pride, or something, for being enough to capture her attention. Even though that was such a stupid reason to feel proud that he felt rather disgusted with himself because of it.

"I can't imagine ever wanting to hang around another boy more than I want to hang around you, Jack." Jack looked up at her, his legs spread out and his palms lying flat down on his knees, and smiled. His ego felt like it had grown ten times since he had woken up that morning, and even though he knew he shouldn't love what she'd just said so much, he did.

"So do you want to kiss some more, or something?" he asked casually, and he couldn't hide the smirk of pleasure that tugged at his lips when she moved to sit down next to him. He felt, for probably the first time in his life, that he had finally come out on top in something. And he liked that feeling.

He liked it a lot.

* * *

**A/N:** All right, so this is one of the last "light" chapters, I suppose. I made Jack so naive and innocent, I guess you could say, for a reason – you'll notice a stark contrast between this chapter and the chapters to come. Chapter four will mark the beginning of the Jack that you'll be able to relate to the Joker, and by chapter five or six we'll get the first little taste of that Mature rating. : )

A huge thanks to the three reviewers who have stayed on with my story! You know who you are! Perhaps an update will come if I get some sort of indication that somebody else (anybody else?) is interested? Tell me in a review, please? I hate to think I'm writing a snore-fest.


	4. Chapter 4

The first time that girl took him and Lola to the city was the last time they all went together.

It had started out with an hour's worth of frenzied searching on the part of Lola, trying to find an outfit that would not make her look sickly, or a scarf that wouldn't make people stare at her and whisper, _"That girl must have cancer, you can so tell she's bald."_

Luckily, that girl swept in and saved the day, just as she always did when it came to fashion disasters. She wrapped a thick and stylish looking black scarf-thing around Lola's head and then slid a pair of sunglasses onto her face. After she enveloped Lola in a trendy black coat that looked brand new, expensive, and had extremely shiny silver fasteners, they were ready to go. That girl bit back her laugh when she looked at Jack's careless attire – his deity sweatshirt and a pair of well-worn and battered jeans.

"You want some shades, too? You'd look cute in them."

Jack glared at her. "Be quiet. Come on, let's just get this over with."

It was a long and tedious ride to the city for Jack. Lola was nearly beside herself with excitement, and he always hated going anywhere public with that girl. People always stared at her. Back at home it was kids he went to school with, checking her out. On the train to the city, it was men. Men casting glances at her from their seats and over their newspapers. Grungy men, drunk men, men who looked like they were on their way to work. They all stared at her with that same, universal sign of longing in their eyes. It made Jack tense and irritable, and so furious he could hardly speak the entire ride. He was also drumming his fingers like mad, which annoyed that girl to the point where she actually reached over and punched him in the hand so hard that his cuticles tingled.

The only content one in their party by the time they stepped out at the station was Lola, who kept peering over the brim of her sunglasses in a faux-sophisticated manner, her brown eyes flickering over everything a mile a minute. She kept pointing out stupid things like billboards and ads plastered to the sides of buildings. And when she saw Wayne Tower standing up against the skyline, its million windows sparkling in the mid-afternoon sunlight, she actually shrieked and pointed, abandoning all blasé pretense.

They'd done it for her, of course. She wanted to go into the city with just the two of them, and go into the stores that she'd only ever dreamt about going into when their mom and dad had ever taken them there. That girl had to buy a dress for a mandatory charity formal that her class was throwing, up at St. Katherine's. It was sponsored by some businessman who donated nearly every year, and the girls were expected to go to show their respect and thanks. In a pious manner, of course. Which was, apparently, the problem.

"It's going to be a butt ugly dress, too, because we can't show our shoulders or our bosoms or our thighs or even our ankles, I'll bet. I think it'll have to be a burka."

Jack snorted. "Your _bosoms_?"

"Jesus Christ, our tits, all right? We can't be parading around with our tits spilling out of our dresses. Probably because that stuffy businessman would take one look at us repressed little Catholic girls and bust a nut having all those fantasies of what he'd like to do to us."

"Ew," Lola said, wrinkling up her nose and thumbing through a rack of glittery dresses.

"D'you think they have, like, NunCo? 'Cos that's where I'll need to go to get this dress. NunCo. Apparel for virgins."

"Oh quit bitching," Jack said, amused. "Just get something so we can get out of here. I hate shopping."

"I don't care," she replied sullenly, and stuck her head in a rack of clothes to search for an acceptably bland dress.

"You looking for something in particular?" the moody cashier said, leaning forward with her elbows on the glass display case and glaring at the three of them. He noticed that she looked around his age, eighteen at the most. He wished he could manage to get a job at a joint like this – he bet they paid her more in an hour than he got paid in a day down at the butcher's, where he had managed to get a job. And she didn't go home covered in blood and stinking of carcass, he guessed.

"Something ugly. Don't worry, we shouldn't have any trouble here," Jack replied promptly. That girl let out a dry laugh from a rack over. The cashier just blinked at him. Lola shot him an admonishing look, as if he was going to get them banned from the city for being so socially awkward.

They spent an eternity in that store, and the next store, and the store after that. Lola tried on a thousand dresses, it seemed, each one of them more sparkly or sequined or frilly than the last. She was thrilled with the day, and the smile plastered on her face was so large it looked as if she'd slept with a coat hanger in her mouth. Like she'd never stop smiling. If Jack was in a better mood he probably would have appreciated the sight a little more – his sister being so happy, that is. It happened so rarely. But the dresses and the waiting rooms and the moody and judgmental cashiers, and especially the men who turned their heads and stopped mid-sentence while talking on their cell phones to stare at that girl, put him in the sort of sour mood that he rarely experienced when in the company of that girl and his sister. He wished they could just go back to that girl's apartment and hang around and watch T.V. or something.

"Stop looking so petulant, Jack." That girl peeked her head out of a dressing room. "This is about Lola and she's having a great time."

"I know that," Jack mumbled. "I just don't like . . . going out, around all these people."

"Better than the Narrows, I'd think. At least these people dress nice and shower regular."

"It's worse than the Narrows," Jack went on, his frustration building. "It's . . . . it's _you_. I hate walking from store to store with you."

"What did I ever –" that girl began, looking hurt.

"All the men on the streets stare at you. Don't you see them? It . . . it _bothers_ me."

Jack stared down at his feet and scratched absently at his burning cheek. He hated saying it out loud, hated admitting that their stares irked him more than he would like to confess. It made him feel weak, the way it bothered him. But he couldn't stop it from bothering him, either. It was something that rose up in him like burning acid, scorching his insides and bathing his sight in red. He was a guy; he knew what they were thinking about when they looked at her. The same things he thought about when he looked at her, sometimes. The same things he dreamt about. But those thoughts, those fantasies, weren't supposed to be for them. She wasn't theirs. She didn't belong to them.

"I see them," she said softly, moving out from her dressing room and coming to stand in front of him. "They're just horny old men. What does it matter?"

What _did_ it matter? She wasn't theirs, but she wasn't exactly his, either. In the months since they had first kissed, back in the fall, they had never truly established any sort of agreement between the two of them. The term 'girlfriend' sounded vulgar and _wrong_, somehow, whenever he thought it in relation to that girl. Not that everybody back in the Narrows didn't think that they were together. Jack had been in more fights since fall than he'd ever been in his life, combined. He couldn't even walk home from work without some asshole or two catching up with him asking about that girl. And that "gentleman" Jimmy Nolan had been the last and most recent.

"_Hey, Napier! Napier, wait up."_

"_I'm, uh, not in the mood for idle conversation right now."_

"_Haha. Itsuh good thing I don't wanna have any of that then. I just wanted to know 'bout __you and that Louise chick. That little Catholic school girl you hang around. What's the deal, man?"_

"_Deal . . ."_

"_Yeah, bro, you know . . . you gettin' some? She's gotta be givin' it up. Why else would you be all over her like you are?"_

Jimmy had turned his head and cleared his throat noisily, and then spat a wad of spit and phlegm onto the cracked asphalt.

"_Maybe I, uh, _like_ her."_

"_Ha, right. Right. You sayin' there ain't nothin' goin' on?"_

"_Yeah_ . . ."

"_Oh come on . . . I know all 'bout them Catholic girls. Frankie Yatz told me that one of 'em took him to the movies and then blew him right there, in the middle of Forrest Gump. They love doin' that shit."_

"_She's not like that. And if I was you, I'd keep my mouth shut about it."_

"_Hey, I'm just sayin' . . . she's pretty fuckin' hot. If I was you I'd be givin' it to her every day. I mean, those tits –"_

And then Jack had punched him, a vicious right hook that swung out of nowhere and had knocked Nolan to the ground before he knew it was coming. Something had come over Jack, something brutal and barbaric, and he found that even though Nolan was hardly putting up a fight and was on the ground half of the time, he was being urged on by some unamenable insistence inside of his gut that told him to beat every square inch of the little bastard's skin. And he had, until he was gasping with exertion and his knuckles were split open and bruised, and some of them very likely broken. His lip had been split from a well-placed punch from Nolan, and Jack had tasted his own blood – a salty and savagely enjoyable taste, at the time.

That girl had been furious when he'd arrived back at his place, where she'd been sitting up with Lola waiting for him. But she never seemed to understand that he had to do it – why should guys like that get away with talking about a girl like her? As if they were trying to contaminate her into becoming like all the other sluts Jack lived around; like they didn't have enough whores, they had to bring her down too. That girl hadn't seemed to understand that, or his anger.

"_I can't believe you're getting into fights for my _honor_, for Christ's sake. Do you know how . . . _melodramatic_ that is?"_

"_Oh, oh, sorry. My mistake. Next time I'll be sure to let Jimmy Nolan tell me all about how much he'd love to fuck you."_

"_That's exactly what you should do, Jack. He's just a _guy_. And so are you. Guys are supposed to talk about stuff like that."_

"_I don't want to talk about stuff like that. I don't want to talk about you like that."_

"_Well, then you'd better just learn to take it with a grain of salt, because nobody is going to stop."_

"_If I beat the hell out of them all, they will."_

"_That would take up a lot of time and energy, don't you think? Just chill out, would you? I don't need some white knight defending my reputation as a pious little virgin."_

She had sounded mad then, but she didn't sound mad now. He supposed it was because he had kept his anger more or less in check, at least to the point where he wasn't going around throwing a punch at any random man who checked her out.

"I don't like knowing that they look at you and think about what they'd like to do to you," Jack crossed his arms over his chest and stared determinedly down at a rip in his jeans.

"How do you know what they're thinking?" that girl asked, her voice soft.

He snorted. As if they would stare at her the way they did with _honorable_ intentions. That was her problem: she was too innocent for her own good. "Because I'm a guy. I know."

She paused with one hand outstretched, nearly brushing his shoulder with the tips of her fingers. There was a shaky breath from her direction before she asked, "Do you think about me like that?"

Jack looked up with wide eyes, abruptly aware of what he had said to her. He expected her to look insulted, or maybe even disgusted, at the suggestion. But the look on her face was slightly calculating and she had a flush painted across her cheeks that did not look like it was from anger. He wasn't quite sure how to respond to her. Should he lie and tell her 'no', and continue to hide all those lust-driven thoughts he had managed to keep secret all this time? Or should he say something noncommital and blow the whole thing off as ridiculous to discuss? Or maybe, just maybe, should he tell her the truth, if only to see what happened. . . . what she would say . . . Maybe that sometimes, she thought about him like that, too . . . .

"I . . ."

"What're you two doin' in here?" Lola demanded, carrying an armful of black dresses and looking annoyed. "I don't like this store. Louise, could ya help me put these back so we can go get somethin' ta eat?"

"Oh! Yes." And then that girl rushed off, blushing, without a backwards glance at Jack.

They spent the rest of the day in the city, but things were strangely quiet and awkward after that. Even Lola noticed it and it put a damper on her mood, as well. Though that didn't stop her from wanting to check out Wayne Tower first hand, going up and standing by the large glass front door and peering inside until she smudged up the glass with her nose and a security guard told her to clear off.

They ate at a tiny little diner with old fashioned booths and a malt machine, even. Jack had saved up just enough money to be able to pay for the meal, even though that girl protested vehemently about it. He ended up having to throw her money back at her face and then shove his own into the confused waitress's hands.

"They actually love each other," Lola reassured the waitress, who looked unsure if she should go get her manager. "Don't worry."

"Shut up, Lola," Jack growled, glaring at that girl, who sat shaking her head at him and muttering something about 'chauvinistic men'.

Jack didn't really speak to that girl until they were on their way back to the station, where there was a hold up in the middle of one street out in front of a church. Lola let out an excited screech and darted forward to watch as the large, oaken front doors swung open and a couple dressed in their wedding attire came out. They looked very young, no older than eighteen or nineteen, and their rigid postures and hunched shoulders displayed, blatantly, their discontent with the entire situation. They did not look happy. Not like you were supposed to look on your wedding day. Still, Jack figured he wouldn't be too happy if he had two rows of people on either side of him, tossing rice at his face.

But if the twisted expression of dislike on the young man's face was anything, it was nothing compared to that of the bride's. Her lip was pulled up in a disgusted snarl, though even that didn't manage to detract from her appearance – Jack took one look at her and realized, with a jolt, that he was probably looking at the prettiest girl in the city after the girl standing next to him. She looked vaguely familiar, too, with long, curling blonde hair and an overtly womanish figure.

"I had no idea they were getting married today," that girl mused, standing up on her toes to get a better look at the couple as they descended the steps, the groom almost dragging the bride after him.

"They don't look like they're primed for, uh, marital bliss."

That girl smirked up at him and replied, "Of course not. Christ, I would have thought you'd recognize them. That's little Johnny Sabatino and Peyton Riley. You know . . . the kids of the mob bosses?"

Jack blinked and then turned his attention back to the groom. His hair was slicked back and the color of coal, and on closer inspection his skin had the olive tone that set the Sabatinos apart from the other inhabitants of Gotham. The line of guests on the groom's side was made of similar looking people, including a man with greying black hair and a heavily scarred face. Johnny Sabatino the elder. The man was an infamous legend where Jack came from.

"But the Rileys have always fought with the Sabatinos," Jack mumbled absently. "Why would they let their kids get hitched?"

"They _made_ their kids get hitched. An arrangement to stop the rivalry between the two mobs, you know? You see how they're treating each other?"

Little Johnny threw himself into the back of the black town car waiting out in front of the church and allowed his bride to clamber in after him, her teeth bared and her nose wrinkled as she hitched up her long white skirt and struggled to shove herself into the back seat without getting caught on anything.

"They hate each other," Jack remarked, smiling grimly. "Well, that's interesting, isn't it? Should make for some . . . colorful . . . developments."

That girl frowned heavily. "You shouldn't talk about it like that. I feel sorry for poor Peyton Riley . . . I mean, that guy is obviously a major jerk. Could you imagine their wedding night?"

That girl shivered and then, unexpectedly, reached out and gripped Jack's hand in hers. She leaned against his arm and they watched as the town car pulled out into the street and disappeared around a corner, most likely heading for some fancy hotel. The crowd settled around the church steps looked at each other warily for a long moment and then began to disperse, each of the men gripping their women's shoulders and looking over their own with shrewd expressions of distrust. The Sabatinos, with their dark skin and hair, were easily distinguishable form the Rileys, who were all fair skinned and had more than one redhead amongst them.

Lola came bounding back over breathlessly. "That was so cool, Jack! I've never seen a real wedding like that before! Hey, are you 'n Louise gonna get married in this church? Oh please, please get married soon, Jack! I wanna see the ceremony and Louise's dress!"

"Stop talking like you're gonna drop dead any second," Jack snapped, feeling sick at the thought. "I'm not getting married any time soon, so you're just going to have wait."

They didn't end up getting back to the Narrows until ten, and they didn't get home until thirty minutes after that. There had been yet another delay when the train had broken down. They had all ended up having to sit in a grungy station that smelled of urine and booze and wait until the city mechanics fixed whatever problem there was. Lola and that girl talked the entire time and Jack listened with minimal interest, but with a sense of contentment at finally being out of the crowded streets of the city.

It was pitch black and eerie on the way back to their homes, and the two girls were thoroughly spooked about having to walk back through the alleys of the Narrows so late. They both flanked Jack, and he was a cross between annoyed and thrilled that that girl gripped at his arm whenever a rat upset a trash bin and went scurrying off into the darkness.

"We're gonna get raped and murdered!" Lola wailed as a drunken bum staggered by, mumbling about 'the price to pay for blood'. Certainly nothing to get excited about; you could hardly pass a day without running into delusional or downright insane bums.

"No you aren't," Jack snapped. "You've got me, haven't you? You think I'd just stand around like an idiot and watch you get raped and murdered, or something?"

"But if they got a gun and say, 'Let me have the girls or you die', you'd have ta let 'em rape us!" Lola reasoned hysterically.

"No I wouldn't. I'd fight them. Just shut your mouth and keep walking, would you?" Jack snorted in annoyance and then shifted his leg so that he could feel the metallic pressure against his ankle – the knife that he had tucked into his sock. He didn't want to admit that it made him uneasy walking around this late with the two of them – that girl in particular, who he knew attracted the wrong sort of attention.

"Here, come on, let's take this alley. We'll be at the end of our street and we won't have to go all the way around the O'Neill building. Stop blubbering, I already told you that nothing's gonna happen to you."

Jack grabbed his sister and that girl and drug them through an alley to their right, stepping over a sack of garbage and ducking underneath a low-hanging clothesline. Lola and that girl glued themselves to his arms again, each of them tugging at him and throwing him off balance every two seconds. As much as he liked the feel of that girl's palms on his skin he was getting more irritated by the second. They were acting like they were walking through hell, or something, and not the home they'd lived in for years and years. He knew it was rough sometimes, but it was beginning to get ridiculous, the way they were acting.

"Jack, watch –"

But Jack went sprawling, his foot caught on something large and unseen by him, as distracted as he was by the girls hanging all over him. His palms scraped against the gravelly asphalt of the alleyway and he swore loudly, sure that he had cut his palm on a stray piece of glass. Lola backed away but that girl scrambled down to help pick Jack up. He pushed her away in annoyance and embarrassment and then looked down at the bum he had tripped over, stretched out across the length of the alley with a broken bottle of alcohol clutched in his frozen fingers. That girl and Lola started forward down the alley cautiously, but Jack stood and stared down at the bum as a cloud shifted overhead and a swatch of moonlight shined down to illuminate his face. Pale as death with wide, lifeless eyes.

"Jack, come on! I'm gettin' scared," Lola called out. He turned and hurried to catch up with them, his body feeling strangely numb and his mind eerily hollow. Empty like that alleyway was empty, save for the dead man he had tripped over.

"I'm going to drop you off at home and then take Louise to her place," Jack told Lola woodenly. She would have cried out in disappointment any other time, but the night had her frightened, and she just wanted to get home. She said nothing, but practically sprinted up to their tenant building. Jack and that girl waited until she tapped on the upstairs window to show them she'd made it in all right before Jack turned and started striding back towards the alley they had just come from.

"Where are you going?" that girl asked, jogging to keep up with him. "Come on, Jack, I want to get inside. . ."

"I had to drop her off before I went to check that bum, again," Jack told her, casting a distracted look back at her. "He's dead."

"That's awful." That girl shuddered, crossing her arms over her chest. "But what does it matter? Why do we have to check him?"

"Because," Jack said, stepping carefully over to the body that lay half covered in filth. He reached out to turn the man's head to the side and then examined the familiar planes of his face. To double-check he even looked at the large-knuckled hands which gripped the alcohol bottle. There wasn't any mistaking it, this time. He knew those knuckles; knew them as well as he knew the own bruises that he had worn on his face for the past fourteen years. "It's my dad."

* * *

**A/N:** So this is, officially, the last of the "light", innocent chapters. This does NOT mean that there will be no more sweet moments between Jack and Louise. This does mean, however, that things will get a lot harder for poor Jack from now on, and you'll be able to distinguish, hopefully, MAJOR Joker-like qualities emerging in his character. The next chapter was, originally, part of this one. But it was ridiculously long so I split it up. : )

The second part will be posted after I've heard from you guys about how you feel about this development!

BTW, the response I got on chapter three was outstanding!** theatre-gypsy, peacefulgrace, Misplaced Levity, crystalstars88, Cullenista, V Evey, Jack's girl, Simplelover15, **and** Ignatius J. Reilly – **you guys ROCK! Seriously, please keep doing what you're doing, you really make writing something special and you keep this story alive. And any other readers – please don't hesitate to drop a line, even if it's only two words. You've no idea how much I appreciate it.

Enough of my rambling! Xx.


	5. Chapter 5

That girl said nothing, but she fell to her knees at Jack's side immediately, examining the vacant-eyed form that stared unseeingly up at the thin line of sky still visible between the buildings. She exhaled and Jack felt her hand grip his arm convulsively, and then a second later her face buried into the crook of his arm.

"Oh God, Jack . . . Jack, I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

He wasn't sure why that girl was apologizing to him. It wasn't as if she'd done it. It wasn't as if anybody had done it. From what Jack could see, there was nothing visibly wrong with his father except for the fact that he was dirty, and that he was dead. The empty bottle in his hand was large and completely empty. Jack would be willing to bet that it had been empty before he had collapsed and it had broken. Jack was willing to bet that he had drunk himself to death on the way home from dealing drugs. He might have even been on his way to that girl's house, to meet up with that girl's mother. But it was obvious he hadn't arrived. It was obvious he never would.

There was a feeling of numbness permeating through Jack's entire body. He tried to sort out the emotions he felt, staring down at his father's corpse, but he found only that hollowness; that emptiness. He wasn't upset or relieved; he wasn't happy and he certainly wasn't sad. He was void of all emotion; uncaring. Completely apathetic. Maybe the feeling would come later, though – maybe he was only in shock just now, because of how sudden and unexpected it was. He had to feel _something_, didn't he? Anger at least . . . But his mind whispered to him that this was all he'd ever feel, because inside he was as cold and unmoveable as the pavement he knelt on. His only thought was that of Lola. Lola was so emotional, so sensitive to issues of death . . . and she had never thought that she would be around for long enough to see somebody close to her die. In a way she'd been comforted by the fact that she would be long gone before she had to see any of her loved ones get put into the ground.

And the funeral. They had no money to pay for a tombstone; no money to pay for a service or a minister. And yet they couldn't just leave him there, in the alley. Jack wished he had had the decency to disappear altogether. To fall into a river and decompose on his own, or something. Even in death he was sucking money from his family. Even in death he was hurting them.

"Jack, do you want to call 911 or . . . or tell Lola?"

Jack thought about this. Would his uncaring manner, so cold and hollow, bother her? Would it make it worse? Would she find more comfort with that girl, who was nearly crying where she knelt beside Jack? But it wasn't that girl who had taken all of their father's beatings, or who had stepped in front of Lola numerous times in order to take the blunt of a blow that their father was careless enough to aim at his sick daughter.

"It ought to be me. I'll do it. You go tell the police we've got a dead body that needs picking up."

He wiped his cold and slightly wet nose on his sleeve and then stood up, brushing off his knees. That girl followed his example, gripping his arm in order to steady herself. Jack wondered if she had ever seen a dead body so up close, before. He had. When he was younger, and he'd been searching for coins in the gutters for that bag of candy he shared with Lola. He had stumbled right across the body of a man shot through the head and tucked behind a dumpster, his legs and arms twisted sickeningly around his body in a way that they never would have, in life. It was odd, because Jack remembered how ugly he had looked with that gunshot. How awful it had made death seem; how messy and crude and violent. Out of all the injuries he'd ever seen on a person, a gunshot had to be the ugliest.

His father didn't look messy. He looked . . . . almost artistic, with how still he lay. So different from how he was in life. All of the violence was drained from him; all of the obscenities and anger were gone. He was just a hollow, empty shell of the menace Jack had known all of his life. The man he had been so frightened of when he was a child, and the man he had despised so violently when he was a young man. And this was all it had taken. One bottle of Jack Daniels too many, and it was all over. He was still and silent and . . . gone. And that was all it took for the slate to be wiped clean. It was almost stunning, the simplicity of it. How easy it was to die.

Jack turned and walked away without a word back to that girl. She followed him silently, and he could hear her sniffle quietly, though he was fairly sure she wasn't crying outright.

"Mom comes home at four or five, today," Jack said to the empty air in front of him. "She's gonna be really upset. I need to tell Lola now so she can calm down before Mom comes home because if Lola sees how upset she'll get, it'll get her worked up. What if she gets so upset that she starts bleeding? Maybe I shouldn't tell her. Maybe I should just tell her Dad ran off or something . . ."

"Jack, you have to tell her. Come up to my place first, though. Let me call the cops and then we'll both go over and tell her, together." A slim, cold hand slipped into Jack's larger one, and without thinking he folded his fingers around it, gripping down hard. That girl let out a quiet gasp of surprise but then squeezed back, moving closer to him and pressing her lips against his shoulder as they walked. Her presence comforted him; dispelled that frightening emptiness that made Jack feel so strangely inhuman. Like he was drifting away from reality, or something.

They trudged up to that girl's place, her quick feet skipping on ahead of him and her hand pulling him up behind her. As soon as they reached number twenty-five that girl yanked the key from around her neck and bent over to unlock to the door, actually remembering to pull the key out before she swung it open. But something seemed wrong, something . . .

Jack reached out and grabbed a fistful of that girl's jacket just before she stepped over the threshold, pulling her back into the hallway roughly and sending her sprawling out across the floor. She looked up with wide eyes, her lips parted in shock.

"You didn't shine the number."

That girl swallowed heavily. Jack had the vaguest idea that she might be afraid of him. "W-What?"

He exhaled heavily and then looked down at that girl, still on the floor and probably afraid to stand back up in case he shoved her down a flight of stairs next. He reached down at grabbed her by her forearms, hoisting her back onto her feet and then holding her steady. "The number on your door. You shine it every time. Every time since I met you."

She was shaking, trembling as he held her. He hated that she was; he wished she'd stop. He wished she would look at him like she was frightened of what he might do next. In a way he almost wanted to shake the fear out of her, but then, that would probably just make her even more afraid.

"I wasn't thinking . . . I was preoccupied. It's just a stupid thing I did."

"But what if something bad happens? What if you don't do it and . . ."

"Jack, stop. You're losing it. It's just a silly superstition."

She reached up and kissed him fiercely on the lips. Warmth flooded through him and he felt the emptiness thin inside of his chest. By the time he opened his eyes she was already standing on her tiptoes and blowing hot air on the bronze number, and then wiping it hurriedly with her sleeve. She looked so energetic, like she was in such a hurry to get to the phone. As if by calling 911 fast she could save his father's life.

Jack followed behind her numbly and watched her nearly tripping to get over to her phone.

"You don't have to rush," he said. "He's dead. Rushing isn't going to bring him back."

That girl turned to look at him again and he was irritated to find that she still looked frightened. Even after she'd kissed him, even after he'd shown her that he hadn't really meant to toss her around like he had. She was still staring at him like he was liable to rush at her and strangle her to death.

She didn't answer him, but she dialed the three-digit number and then pressed the phone to her ear and sat down on her couch. Jack looked around her apartment and noticed a line of cocaine still left out on the coffee table, a razorblade next to it with the blade covered in fine white powder. It was very likely that that girl's mother was somewhere back in her room, entertaining a client. Jack wondered if she had been expecting his father, and if she had been disappointed when he hadn't arrived.

That girl had somebody on the line and was reciting their address in a shaky voice. She was telling them that she wasn't sure if he'd been murdered but that it didn't seem like it. Jack examined the pallor of her skin and the thinness of her lips. Her eyes looked huge in her face, an unnerving shade of icy blue. She was still gorgeous. Unearthly gorgeous. The only difference was that she looked breakable, now. Like a china doll. He realized he didn't like her looking that way.

The girl hung up the phone and looked up at Jack with that same expression of wariness.

"What? Why do you keep looking at me like that?"

She shook her head and then stood, walking over to him swiftly and snaking her arms around his stomach, pressing her face against his chest.

"He wasn't even your dad," Jack mumbled. "He . . ."

"I'm not upset about that. I -I'm scared for you, Jack." Her breath was uneven and hot against his neck as she looked up at him, their bodies still pressed together. "God, that look in your eyes . . . They've got as much life in them as your father has in his right now."

She reached up and pressed her cold hand against his burning cheek, the tips of her jagged nails biting into his jaw.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Jack replied tonelessly. "I'm not upset. I don't _care_. Do you want me to sob into your shoulder or something?"

Her lips thinned as she looked up at him, her hand slipping down from his face as she took a step back from him and surveyed him minutely from underneath of thick eyelashes.

"I know," she said finally. "I know you don't care. That's what scares me. That's just it."

Jack felt his body stiffen, her unerring ability to strike that exact nerve inside of him sparking irrational anger in his gut. His voice was needlessly cold when he responded to her, and in a detached sort of way he hated himself for his tone and the viciousness with which he bit out his next words.

"I don't need you to worry about me. I don't need you at all."

For a moment she looked like he'd slapped her, and then in the next she looked like she would very much like to slap _him_. He wished she would. He wished she would raise up her arm and strike him so hard across the face that his skin tingled. It'd be nothing like his father used to dish out, of course; but still, it'd be something . . .

She tossed back her hair and straightened her shoulders, like she was facing an adversary, and for the first time Jack was reminded that despite how fragile she looked she was still from the Narrows. Still the daughter of a whore. She looked like part of the aristocracy, but underneath . . .

"You think you're going to push me away, Jack? You think you can . . . put me down, call me a name or two, maybe bring up some of my faults, and it'll make me just give up on you? I know what you're doing. I know you_._"

"You –"

"I'm the only one you've got. So maybe you ought to think for a second or two about how much you're willing to lose before you talk to me like that."

She cast him one look of deep resentment and then turned on her heel, storming out of the door before Jack could grasp what had just happened. He was torn between burning anger and an incredible sense of burgeoning shame. He couldn't remember ever being so ashamed of how he'd said something before in his life.

There were heavy steps from the hallway and a loud, masculine clearing of the throat. Jack turned his head just in time to see an overweight and sweaty man lumber into view, slicking back wet hair from his moist brow and straightening a stained white shirt as he walked. The man stopped when he saw Jack, and then cast his eyes immediately to the line of coke sitting untouched on the coffee table, as if reassuring himself that it was still there.

"You next?" the man growled, plodding over to throw himself down onto the couch heavily. He was breathing hard, a wheezy gasping that Jack was surprised he hadn't heard, before. "Din't know she had seconds lined up."

Jack's face twisted in disgust. "No," he replied coldly, "I'm not next."

The man leaned forward and pulled a dollar bill from his back pocket, rolling it up carefully before placing it to the start of the line of cocaine and then lowering his nose to the top of it, one meaty finger plugging his free nostril. In one quick swipe the neat line of drugs was gone, and the man was snuffling and wheezing harder than ever, his sweaty jowls jiggling with every snort and cough. Watery, red-rimmed eyes focused on Jack again, squinting in the direction of his chest.

"Nothin' like a snort before and after a good fuck, huh kid?" Jack did not reply. "Wha's that you got on yer shirt? That some kinda . . . tree?"

Jack looked down at his own sweatshirt, the many-armed deity sitting cross-legged with an expression of benevolence on its face. Each hand held one full and luscious looking apple. The sense of shame grew stronger, and Jack exhaled heavily. How long had it taken her to find a shirt like this? For him? And she was probably already at his place, telling Lola, his sister, that their father was dead. She was right – he was losing it. Over nothing. Over a man Jack didn't give two shits about, alive or dead.

He turned away from the gros representation of the filth that lived in the Narrows, and from the softer footsteps that were fast approaching down the hall, and slipped out of that girl's apartment just as he heard a gruff voice say, "Your second's gone and skittered away. Guess the kid got stage fright, hahaha."

The sky was cloudy with smog when Jack stepped out into the street. The night was cold and the wind was whistling through the buildings, stinging against any patches of exposed skin. That girl had probably been terrified rushing down the street to Jack's home. To anybody else, to another person outside on a night like this, with the body of their dead father lying not fifty feet away, the night would have felt menacing at the least. But to him it didn't. To him everything felt so unbelievably still. Peaceful. Jack could stand there in the middle of the street with the smelly steam billowing up from nearby grates and obscuring his vision and think to himself that the entire city might be nice if it was like this. This quiet. This unmoving.

This dead.

* * *

A/N: **Tell me what you guys thought of this chapter and Jack's Joker-ness peeking through? The next chapter will mark the beginning of a plot-twist (I guess?). Warning: will contain 'Angst' with a little dash of 'MATURE'. **


	6. Chapter 6

"No! No, you get out! You sick all over the meat! You get out!"

A man with a wide, waxy face and a rotund belly came bursting out from the back of the butcher's shop waving a bloody knife at Lola, who had just entered through the door and had chosen the exact wrong time to sneeze.

"She's isn't going to contaminate the meat with goddamn _cancer_!" Jack growled at the man, slamming down a hunk of pork and wiping his bloody hands on the front of his already burgundy apron.

"You talk back and you get fired! Get little girl out the store or I take pay for week!"

By the time Jack pulled the apron off and tossed it behind the counter Lola's eyes were already swimming with tears. But her back was ramrod straight and her chin was jutted out, which said something for her, Jack figured. At least she wasn't a complete pushover.

Still, he couldn't help but grip a little harder than he meant to when he drug her from the shop by her upper arm.

"Ouch! Jack, stoppit! I only come by because you ain't never around anymore. Me 'n Louise hardly know your face. Look, your hair's nearly 'round your ears."

"I _know_ how long my hair is. I'm working. You know I'm always working. Why do you have to come here and bother me?"

Lola pouted up at him moodily, acting ten instead of fourteen, and then grumbled, "Fine, get all mad 'cos me 'n Louise _care_ about you. She misses you, ya know. If you ain't careful she'll go 'n get another boyfriend."

Jack felt a hot surge of anger in his stomach and his face twisted into the furious expression it took on so often these days.

"I wasn't her boyfriend in the first place. And if you got another idea as to how we're going to get money now that Dad and his crack income are six feet under, then by all means, _enlighten_ me."

He spread his arms wide and waited for a response, but Lola only crossed her skinny arms and looked away from him.

"That's what I thought." He turned his head and spit on the sidewalk, trying to rid himself of the taste of blood that he always got in the back of his throat after working for so long. He wasn't sure if he was getting flecks on his lips and then licking them or if he was just constantly smelling it, which made him think he could taste it. Whatever it was, he was beginning to despise it so much he often had deep thoughts about what it'd smell like to burn the entire fucking place to the ground. He bet the entire state would smell like bacon for a year. It'd be one hell of an improvement."You have anything else to say, other than to recite a Hallmark card to me?"

Lola shook her head with her nose scrunched up, turning around and walking away from him without another word. Jack knew he was being harsh; he usually didn't talk to his sister that way. He tried not to speak to his sister _or_ that girl in the tone of voice he was using with them both so frequently now. When he saw them, that is. But he couldn't help it. It was like he could never get a break from people's bullshit, dawn till dusk. In the morning it was his mother, just getting home from work and crying her eyes out still, all the while chain smoking at the kitchen table. And then it was the complete idiots who went to his school. It was like they never, _ever_ stopped talking. Every second of every single minute of every single school day he had to hear one of them running their mouths about something. And sometimes it was about him or his sister or even that girl, which would get him into yet another fight. His knuckles seemed permanently split open from the number of times a week he went around slamming his fist into peoples' faces. He got into so many fights and lifted so many dead animal carcasses that he was beginning to notice a definite tightening of his limbs and torso, sinewy muscle replacing the gangly limbs he had known his entire life. His body was almost as foreign to him as the irrational, burning anger that plagued him every minute of the day.

After school he went straight to work, way back in the limb-numbing cold of the meat freezer, stringing up skinless animals and most days having to skin and gut them himself. He was so used to cutting up bodies that it didn't even bother him anymore; in fact, most days it worked as a sort of catharsis for him. He felt a sort of sickening enjoyment in the way the flesh sounded as it ripped apart, muscle by muscle, tissue by tissue; the way the bones of the ribs yielded so easily beneath of his palms. He put every ounce of frustration possible behind the knife that he used to slice and carve, hoping that by the time he made it home it would all be left behind inside of the pitted torsos he worked with. Most days it didn't work. Most days his boss would lumber around and bellow at him in barely understandable English, sending him off in as bad a mood as he had arrived in. And it never helped that Jack had to frequently argue about his paycheck, because the fat bastard thought that he could get by with skimming fifty dollars off of him.

"_You complain all day. All day complain. Money, money, money! You don't stop complaining I fire you!"_

"_Find somebody else who doesn't mind being waist deep in intestines and maybe I'll take that threat more seriously."_

"_You shut mouth and get work! Animals no cut up them own!"_

But it didn't stop with his boss, either. When he finally stumbled home with his hands aching more than the rest of his body put together, Lola was all over him, wanting to know about his day and chattering into his ear until he wanted to grab one of the half empty liquor bottles that his dad had left underneath the sink and drink until he couldn't hear anything, anymore. And he hated that that girl was always around when he came home. There to see him when he stumbled in smelling like rancid meat; there when he came out of the shower ten minutes later, just wishing that he could fall down into his bed face first and never get up again; there as he felt himself grow more and more annoyed at his sick little sister, who he _knew_ only missed having him around. Who needed him around more and more, since the night he and that girl had told her that their dad was dead. But Jack didn't have any energy to waste on dishing out affection and good spirits. He just didn't have the time.

And it never, ever helped that his every move was watched by that girl, with eyes far too understanding and lips that were far too out of reach for him. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd kissed her. At the funeral, probably. The service. They hadn't had any money for a real viewing or anything – not like anybody would have gone. His father had been lowered into the ground on one grey and drizzly afternoon, with a droning preacher dabbling at a runny nose as he wheezed out the final rites. His mother and Lola had been there, along with that girl and her mother. Jack had found it ironic that the two women would be standing side by side next to the grave of a man who had used both of them, and abused at least one of them. But his mother hadn't seemed to care. She had wept so hard that she had fallen to the soft earth, muddying the hem of her only good skirt. Jack didn't bother to catch her when she crumpled; he didn't bother to try and pick her up when the service was finished. He just looped his arm around Lola's shoulders and pulled her away. His mother hadn't even noticed when they left her side. She was too busy drowning in her own misplaced grief.

That girl had followed him and Lola back from the cemetery, trekking back to their homes on foot. It would take nearly an hour and Jack had had on a pair of painful threadbare sneakers – sneakers that he'd borrowed a can of black spray paint from a boy smearing graffiti onto the side of a building to stain for the service. Lola had received an old pair of shiny-buckled shoes from that girl, as well as a nice black dress and the same black scarf she'd worn to the city on a day that felt like an eternity ago.

They hadn't talked much on the way back through the cemetery; at least not until they reached the gate and Lola had stopped, turning to face the sparsely vegetated expanse of crumbling graves. There was one solitary tree growing far off in the distance, though he had no idea what type it was. It was bare and ugly looking, and it was hard to tell if it would even bloom in the springtime. Nothing green and lively and lush was guaranteed in the Narrows.

"I wanna be buried underneath that tree, there," Lola had said, pointing one thin, unsteady finger at the ugly little tree in the distance. At the opposite end of the cemetery as her father.

"Don't be stupid, Lola," Jack had snapped at her, rubbing at his eyes in exhaustion. He couldn't get the cost of the service off of his mind, or the cost of the new treatments Lola had to go through. Another round . . . Would they even be able to afford rent? Food? Heat?

"It's not stupid. I want to be buried right there, underneath that tree. I think it'll bloom in the springtime. Somethin' really pretty, you know . . . I wanna be buried by somethin' pretty. Maybe it'll have pink blossoms. Maybe it'll have little fruit on it, or somethin'. And it'll drop fruit on my grave and I'll be able ta taste it all the way in heaven. You promise to bury me underneath of that tree, Jack?"

Jack had leaned against the rickety wrought iron railing of the cemetery and bowed his head between his outstretched arms.

"What makes you think I'll be burying you at all, huh?" Jack had said. "You're getting yourself all worked up because we're in the graveyard and you're thinking about death. Stop it."

"Just promise you'll bury me underneath the tree, Jack."

"Fine! I promise to bury you underneath of that goddamn tree, all right? But I hope you don't expect me to chop through all the roots. Maybe I'll roll you up in a sheet and toss you in and let you fall where you fall, huh? Since you want to be buried underneath of the tree so bad."

Her face had stayed unmoving, even as that girl's had twisted with shock and disapproval. It was the first indication that Jack had had that Lola knew she was really going to die. It'd made him feel like passing out. Like throwing his body at the wrought iron gate he'd been leaning against and pummeling it until the bones in his hands were crushed into a fine powder.

"Maybe after you go off and live your life and have a bunch of kids and grandkids you can come back here to be buried by me," Lola had said to him, completely ignoring his harsh comment. "I want to be buried underneath of that tree with you. I'd feel real lonely if I was there forever without you."

"That sounds like a plan, Lola," that girl had intervened, resting her hand on Jack's hunched shoulder. "I'll make sure that all three of us are buried underneath of that tree, side-by-side. That way we'll be together forever."

Lola had seemed content with this answer and started to walk ahead of the two of them. That girl had turned to him with her mouth set in a grim line. They hadn't spoken much since that night his father had died and they had fought. It was still early, then – the not talking. Now it was bordering on months. But then it had seemed almost like something they'd get over pretty soon.

"You're thinking too hard, Jack. I know because you get this tiny little wrinkle," she had reached out her forehead and placed one fingertip at the point just between his two eyebrows, "right there . . . and your mouth gets all tight, and your eyes . . ."

She had fallen silent at that, and Jack remembered feeling so annoyed that she had brought up his damn eyes again. Like they were glowing red, or something. Like she was witnessing some kind of demonic possession.

"It'll be all right. You know it?" Her soft voice had done nothing to calm the queasy feeling in his stomach, or the frustration that was building up inside of him like some unstoppable torrent of water, beating down on every inch of him from the inside out.

"We've got no money. Lola's sick. She knows she's going to die. She just told us where to bury her. Where to bury her." He had let out a shout of humorless laughter, and the fingers gripping his shoulder had tightened, ragged nails scraping against the thin fabric of his weather-beaten jacket. "Like a . . . like a _will_! Like she was adding a clause to her will! Be-because she knows she's going to die!"

It had all seemed so hilarious all of a sudden, and he was laughing until he was bent over, gasping for breath. It was like huge cosmic joke, what was happening. No money, no way out, no way to change things. Trapped like animals, just waiting to be put down. Waiting to die, and there was nothing they could do about it. What would happen to him after Lola was dead? Had he even thought of it? What would he even _do_? Go run off with that girl and live happily ever after until, at a ripe old age, they laid him down underneath that tree next to her? No, no. That wasn't in the cards, Jack knew that already. He didn't know what was ahead, but he knew it didn't include breaking free and being happy. There was no escaping this; there was no happiness to be gained, anywhere.

"Stop it. This isn't funny. Jack, this _isn't funny!_" She had reached out and slapped him sharp across the face. The laughter had died from his lips and he had looked up at her, straightening his body and feeling drained of all energy.

"You've got to get a hold of yourself. You've got to. You're overwhelmed. Everything is . . . everything is complete chaos right now. But you can't let yourself fall apart just because you're suddenly feeling reality – you can't become your father, Jack." She had nodded back towards the faraway grave where his mother was still sobbing on her hands and knees, wailing out into the hazy mid-afternoon fog.

"I'm fine," he had told her, his voice flat and monotone.

"You will be, if you just . . . let us help you. Lola and me. Me. Let me help you. You don't have to be alone, Jack."

Jack had said nothing, but that steely glint in her blue eyes made them shine like almost nothing he'd ever seen before. They were almost spectral, the way they shone. Fitting, he remembered thinking, considering they were in a graveyard.

And then he had kissed her, sure that it would not be the last time, because when had it been? Ever since that first time in her tiny little bathroom it had just been established that they were a pair. Together. He had gone from dreaming of pressing his lips to hers to actually doing it, and he couldn't even remember a time when he hadn't been. Except for now. Because ever since that funeral – when he had backed her up against that wrought iron gate and kissed her until her lips got cherry red and she had to gasp out for him to let her catch her breath, and then sighed into his mouth when he didn't listen to her – ever since then, there had hardly been a touch between the two of them.

But, Jack fumed silently as he slipped back into the butcher's shop and retrieved his bloody apron, that was just fine. He didn't need any distractions, anyway. It was better to do things alone. No interruptions; no interferences. Nobody to get in the way of business. Jack could understand that – if he was ever to become a businessman he would want to work alone, without a doubt. And their situation – his and that girl's – wasn't any different. They were business partners, both of them caretakers over Lola, both of them expected to coexist pleasantly and work together for their client's well-being. That was all. If it had turned into something a bit more, something a bit more heated in the emotionally weighty aftermath of a misty funeral service, that wasn't his fault. And he shouldn't dwell on it. He didn't care what she did.

"Calm down with knife! No cutting through rock! Meat! Meat! Easy!" His boss strode over and snatched the knife from Jack's hands, and for the first time Jack realized that he had been decimating the hunk of pork in front of him. "You make sausages! Brute! No squeeze too hard!"

He pushed Jack towards the tiny table set up for sausages and mumbled a stream of incoherent obscenities under his breath, some in English and others in a language Jack couldn't recognize but guessed to be somehow Asian or Middle-Eastern.

There was a sharp gust of humid summer air as a customer entered, and then a cool feminine voice drifted throughout the shop. "Five steaks. And hurry it up, would you? It smells horrific in this place."

"Steaks! You, sausages, go get steaks!" Jack dropped the sausage casing he was holding and shot a glare of loathing towards the heavyset man who was currently blocking the entirety of their sole customer from his view. He strode into the back and retrieved five frozen and ancient steaks, wrapped and bagged, and then made his way back up to the front counter.

He slammed down the bag of steaks and said, staring down at the billing tab he had pulled out, "Thirty-five even."

The woman emitted a gusty sigh and unsnapped a very shiny black purse. The glare from the dim light in the shop against the skin of the bag – it looked like snake, or alligator – drug Jack's unwilling eyes up to the face of the young girl standing opposite him. Her hair was as elegantly coifed and curled as it had been the first time Jack had seen her being dragged down the steps of that church in the city, a newlywed. It had only been four months since then but Jack saw immediately that things had gone exactly how he had predicated – interestingly. If the purple and black bruise that bloomed out from underneath of the wide rimmed sunglasses Peyton Riley was wearing was any indication. Jack smirked.

"What are you sneering at?" Riley asked snappishly.

"Just checking out the . . . workmanship." Jack gestured to the space around his own eye that mirrored her bruise. Her gloved fingers went up to her cheek in an almost thoughtless gesture. He was reminded of a day several years ago, when a girl had seen him do the same thing. "It's nice. Not the best I've seen but, uh . . . I'm sure he'll get the swing just right with enough practice."

"Are you _taunting_ me about my bruise?" Riley asked, leaning forward against the counter and peering at him from over the tops of her shades. "Do you have any idea who I am?"

Jack snorted. "Oh sure. Sure I do. You're that Riley broad. Or is it Sabatino now? How does that work out?"

The tiny, carefully done up lips twisted into intense hatred at the mention of the surname – her surname, by law. "It's Riley. And if you know what's good for you, you'll learn to watch your mouth. It's not prudent to goad customers . . . especially if they happen to be influential customers."

Jack let out a long 'Mmmm' and went back to scribbling down the price of the steaks and the name of the recipient on his billing pad. When he reached the bottom he scribbled a lopsided 'J' and then ripped off the slip, slapping it down onto the counter and then sliding it across to Riley with his knuckles holding it to the surface. A gloved hand reached for it but Jack held it down, staring at the fur that rimmed her wrists. Real fur . . . .

"You know what _I _think is prudent?" Jack questioned, running prices through his head.. You had to get real fur in the city, and you could only be sure of authenticity by getting it from the real pricey stores, the ones that sold to all those billionaires in the Palisades . . . which meant that the mob, the Sabatinos, had income. A large amount of income. He had always known it, but had never seen an example of it up close, so close he could see every individual strand of fine fox fur that lined Riley's gloves.

"No," Riley snapped, digging around through her clutch handbag for money, one hand still tugging at her bill.

"_I_ think that you might want to go home and slap one of these babies," he tapped the top steak, "over that eye of yours. Chill it a bit. Make that nasty swelling go down. Before you put dinner on the table like a good, obedient little wife, of course. You want to look good for such a . . . gentleman."

He smirked again and then released the billing slip abruptly, scooping up the money and turning away from Peyton Riley without a backwards glance. Figures were dancing through his head; prices of procedures in comparison to that fur lined glove. If _she_ – the hated, rival wife – was getting enough money to keep herself clothed in such style, he wondered what sort of cut the people up top were getting. Millions. Scammed millions, directly into the pockets of those two crime families. . . .

Jack drummed his fingers restlessly against the sausage counter.

"Ahem . . . Jay?"

Jack turned around distractedly, another sneer tugging at his lips when he noticed that Riley was still standing at his counter with billing slip in hand, as if waiting for a dismissal.

"Uh . . . _yeah_?"

Riley's dark blue irises flashed as she leaned forward against the counter, tapping her index fingers in a steady, sharp staccato that would have driven that girl from down the street absolutely insane.

"The steak . . . it would really help my eye?" The pencil thin eyebrows contracted over her dark eyeglasses, giving her the appearance of being very interested in something she was looking at.

"Suuure. Same as an ice pack." Jack kept his gaze on her this time. She held out longer than most people he knew when he was staring at them so unblinkingly, but it still only took a few short minutes before she straightened up and smoothed her hair out of her face – a fold. A good old fashioned stare-down, just like out in the wild. The first to back down gave the other dominance over the rest of the encounter.

"You're really not intimidated by me?" she demanded.

Jack blinked and then laughed loudly. "You? Who managed to get herself decked by some wimpy Italian? I think I can handle you, if worse comes to worse."

He chuckled as he turned back around, focusing solely on stuffing his sausage casings but aware all the while of Peyton Riley's black-and-blue eyes on him as he worked. She slipped out of the shop quietly, like a breath of air being released during sleep – hardly noticeable. Jack grinned to himself and tapped his fingers in an imitation of the same hard little rhythm he had just heard.

Interesting. Very, very interesting.

* * *

Lola and that girl were sitting on the floor playing a card game when he let himself in after work that night. It was nearly midnight, and he knew that girl had school bright and early in the morning. He wasn't planning on getting there on time, but he knew she was. She always did, without fail. He wondered why it was she felt she had to stay at his place so late; until he came home, most nights. To keep watch on Lola and make sure she didn't have an attack, probably.

"Oh. It's you." Lola sniffed and looked back down at her cards, obviously giving him the cold shoulder. Jack threw his bag down by the door and went immediately for the shower, hoping that his failing to acknowledge that girl's presence would make her leave.

He thought it would, but it didn't. He was just in the midst of pulling his shirt over his head when there came a soft and distinctly familiar tap on the door. Jack rubbed his eyes and then pulled it open.

"What? Can't a guy get any privacy around here?" he snapped irritably.

She didn't look at all bothered by it, and that made him angry. But everything about her made him angry, lately. It made him angry that she was always around when he was at his worst; it made him angry that she never seemed to speak to him like she used to but just sat in the background and observed him; it made him angry that she had let him kiss her like he had after his father's funeral but hadn't come close to him since; it made him angry that she just got prettier and prettier every month while he got more and more worn down; it made him furious that she might be out running around with other guys while he was working and going to school from morning til night.

But there was nothing he could do about any of that, and that helplessness was what bothered him the most.

Without answer she slipped into the bathroom and closed the door behind her, looking up at him at a sharper angle than usual.

"You're taller, again," she remarked idly. Her eyes roamed over the planes of his face and across the width of his bare shoulders. He waited for the tiny flicker that meant she had allowed them to travel down to his abdomen, but it didn't come.

"Generally that's what people _do_ over time." He backed up and kicked his rumpled shirt across the bathroom floor. "Grow. Evolve. Change. . . . Get taller."

"Your hands are split open again, too." She reached out and grabbed his left one, bringing it up level with her lips and running soft fingertips over the bruised and busted knuckles. He had to fight the urge to shudder.

"Well, you know the people in the Narrows . . ."

She was still holding his hand, her thumb stroking circles over the tendons of his wrist. "Of course I do. But that doesn't mean you have to respond to their bait, Jack. They're just trying to get a rise out of you. You're giving them what they want by fighting them."

Jack thought about the last person he had fought, who had decided to make a smart comment about Lola's head and its resemblance to a chicken's egg, and the way the boy had dripped blood once Jack was through with him.

"I don't think that what I do to them is what they want . . ." That girl's nails – still bitten down to the quick – pinched down on his skin. He pulled his hand away, letting it drop to his side, hating himself for the part of him that cried out for the touch of her fingers against his cuts and bruises. "So to what do I owe this invasion of privacy?"

She looked taken aback, but only slightly. He supposed that even his biting words were beginning to lose their affect on her. Jack wondered how long it would be before his coldness, his irritability, stopped bothering her altogether. Before she stopped caring completely. Before she moved on. It wasn't unlikely that it had already happened. . .

"I wanted to see how you're doing. We've barely talked for months now. Not since . . ."

Jack cocked one eyebrow and stared down at her as she faltered. "Since we put my dad in the ground."

Her eyelids fluttered as she cast her gaze downward. Her skin looked flawless in the dim lighting of the bathroom, smooth as paper and clear as a porcelain doll. It was like every exposed inch of her was soft and smooth. Or maybe it just felt like that to him, because his cheeks were rough with the shadow of a beard, and his knuckles were swollen and caked with dried blood, and his fingertips and palms were riddled with calluses. He bet that the parts of her that were unexposed would even be smoother, if that was possible.

"Or did you mean to say, since the last time we kissed?" Jack took a step closer to her, his heart jumping at the way she exhaled shakily, her teeth capturing her bottom lip. She seemed almost uncomfortable with his close proximity and he took another step forward intentionally, to push her boundaries back. She had no right to be uncomfortable with his closeness – they had established, months and months before, that they belonged to one another. You couldn't just back out of an unspoken agreement that was that strong, that binding. She couldn't just back away from him. Especially since there was only so far she could go before she ended up pressed against a wall.

"Do you remember the last time we were together in a bathroom . . ?" Jack spoke quietly, reaching out to press one heavy hand against the fragile planes of her face. She felt so breakable; like if he squeezed just a little too tightly her entire bone structure might just crumble in his palms.

Her chest was rising and falling with increasing frequency. The hand cupping her face slid downward, stroking across the flesh of her neck and drawing out shivers from her like poison from a wound. A heartbeat fluttered like wings beneath of his palm, a flickering _thumpthumpthump_ that almost mirrored the unsteadiness of her breathing; her skin was radiating a sort of heat that he could feel where he stood, so close to her now; shaky breath was fanning out across his face, sweet and soft and warm. A mugginess hung in the air, seemingly born from physical attraction alone. Because Jack knew what this was now – he could see it reflected in the cobalt of her eyes; could feel it brushing over his skin; could hear it as she exhaled; could taste it on the air. It tasted raw and sinful, the way addiction would taste if you could drink it in a glass.

He dragged her body towards him without concern about where her limbs went, or even if she might object. She _wouldn't_ object, because she wanted it. All of that time she had been sitting at a distance from him and staring, staring, she had really been begging him to come and do just this: grab her by her arms and force her head back and her lips open, pushing his tongue over them and past them without care. Her personal boundaries meant nothing to him, and he didn't think they meant very much her, either, where he was concerned. Jack began to think that it was her intention to catch him alone like this, to bite her lip and stare demurely at the ground as if she wasn't all the while trying to steady how fast her blood was pumping through her veins at the mere sight of him shirtless. He knew it; it was all clear to him now. Clarity.

Her back found its way up against the wall of his bathroom; it was dirty and consistently damp because of the mold that lay just beneath of the surface but none of that mattered, because Jack didn't think that he'd ever kissed her like this before. He was able to recall dimly that his little sister was sitting just outside of those paper thin walls and that she might hear something but it all seemed so separate, like two different worlds – One was outside, where Lola was sick and wouldn't recover; and the other was where Jack was, pressed against that girl, fingers and palms and arms clutching at him desperately, lips burning from friction and unwilling to stop, bodies leaning into each other and Jack hard against her hip, rubbing against her insistently to let her know just how powerless she really was. But at the same time his control was slipping, slipping farther and farther as he forced his body tighter against hers.

Her fingers found his hair and tightened, jerking his head back and filling the tight space with now audible gasps.

"Jack . . ." she panted, her head lolling backwards as thrills shot through his limbs at the sound of his name on her lips. It had never sounded so good, would never sound so good, he was sure of it.

He leaned into her again, moist lips finding a dry pulse point and sucking intently. There it was again: addiction, and this time he could swirl it around his tongue and drag his mouth across it. And underneath there was the tangy and artificial taste of something like lotion, applied earlier in the day and faded but still there. Jack could still feel her gripping at him, fingers scraping down his chest and even stroking over the light brushing of hair that ran vertically along his stomach. She was trembling but urgently pressing forward, moving against him in a way that seemed almost sinuous when in comparison to how he was doing it, hard and demanding. But it worked, whatever it was; that joining of fast and slow, rough and smooth. Together, they made something perfect.

The world fell away at the first ragged, husky murmur that slipped from her lips, desire dripping on her words and weighing them down. There were no painful bruises on his hands, no exhaustion hanging on his limbs, no stress beating against his skull, no dead father, no sick sister, no weak mother, no death, no pain, nothing, nothing, nothing except for her and the way she smelled and the way she breathed. The word she had whispered echoed like a scream in his mind, and it filled him completely, driving everything out except for that one pleading mutter. _More, more, more. _

There was no reality. There was nothing but the stroking of their clothed and heated bodies, her skin flushed over the rumpled and lopsided shirt that Jack had hiked up past her bellybutton and pulled off of one shoulder. Nothing but the marks they'd left on one another; wet, swollen skin and thin, jagged lines. Nothing but the harshness of their mingled breath and the trembling of her bottom lip.

There was only the wild building of lust and the frantic grappling to hold onto control but failing miserably because control was long gone, lost somewhere before Jack had heard that first _taptap_ on his bathroom door, or maybe even before that, when he had first blinked his eyes open to a too-sunny street and a girl sitting on a stoop in a crisp, crisp white blouse.

Her body arched against his in a feline-like movement and Jack grit his teeth, his eyes swimming out of focus as the world bent and contorted itself into shapes that defied normalcy: triangles into squares and circles into rectangles and diamonds into starbursts that flashed like lightning; sparked like flames. _More, more, more_, and Jack felt himself grip that girl tightly as he pushed forward one last time. He buried his face into her neck and tried to stifle the husky, guttural moan that ripped from his throat but couldn't. Her name was raw on his lips; his sounded like benediction on hers.

Perfect.

* * *

**A/N:** How did you guys like this chapter? What d'you think about Peyton Riley? Any guesses on how things will go, or how you'd _like_ them to go? And wahoo! Jack & Louise engaged in some extracurricular body friction – about time, right? I don't pretend to be the Mature-scene queen – far from it. But I hope that it managed to not be cringe-worthy...? = / . I don't know, you tell me?

P.S - to anyone who is a die-hard comic fan, please excuse any time-line discrepancies with the whole Peyton Riley/Johnny Sabatino story arc. I fell in love with their story and I'm fitting it to my liking – I guess in that respect and that respect only it may be a little AU.

P.P.S - I got added to a community! Well, this story did, anyway. It's called The Devil's Advocate and they deal with deliciously nasty, sardonic, and evil Joker characterizations. Thanks, TDA. I hope I won't disappoint.


	7. Chapter 7

She came back the next month. Sauntered in like she owned the place; like she didn't have enough money and presence to go to some other, better butcher's shop. One that didn't freeze meat for too long and get it from dodgy dealers in the first place. Maybe she knew it, though. Maybe she hoped that one of the steaks she asked for would be contaminated with some sort of deadly food poisoning, and kill her abusive husband at the dinner he'd probably forced her to prepare for him. That'd be a sort of poetic justice; it seemed like something that Peyton Riley would enjoy doing, would go out of her way to set up.

He doubted it, though, when she asked specifically for him. For Jay, that blond boy who had sold her the steaks before, one month ago. And of course everybody in the shop would remember her, because how many other radiantly blonde women walked in with their lips lined and their clothes pressed and streamlined to fit their body perfectly?

The bruise on her eye was gone, but there were new bruises blooming on her jaw and a split on her lip that she couldn't hide with sunglasses, and failed to hide with the heavy coverup she'd applied. Jack approached the counter cautiously, curiously, examining the way she held her body and the way her eyes studied him as he approached. And it was there; easy to distinguish but confusing to encounter: flirtation. In the lines of her body and the curve of her mouth, beckoning him forward with a coquettish quirk of her eyebrows.

"If you're going to make it a point to come here often, I might have to start stashing a first-aid kit with the billing sheets," Jack commented wryly, searching for a pen to sign the order off.

"Johnny makes it a point to operate in the Narrows. Can you blame a girl for searching out the best source of . . . meat . . . she can find?"

His hand stuttered in his writing and he looked up at her. It wasn't teasing. It was the low sort of sophisticated seduction that girls from the Narrows tried their entire lives to get right, but never quite managed. The smoothing of her dress before she leaned forward over the counter; the conscious pressing-together of her breasts so that they almost spilled out of the top of her dress.

She was proving to be, just as the first time he'd met her, very interesting.

"Do you have a name, Jay?" Her fingernails were long and painted a deep blood red. She trailed circles across the dirty counter top with her middle finger, her others curled up inside of her palm, an open and blatant symbol: _Fuck._

"No," Jack replied, finishing his tab and ripping it off noisily.

"So you're just an initial? An enigma, huh?" Her smile was demure and primitive at the same time.

"That's right. And what are _you_?" He leaned forward on his still-split knuckles, meeting her avid gaze blandly and letting her know that he was neither intimidated nor attracted to her. She merely smirked in response to his question.

"Everybody knows what I am. I'm a mafia princess. That's all." The twist to her lips lost its flirtatiousness and took on an expression of deep resentment.

Jack reached forward and gripped her chin with one blood smeared hand. She did not flinch away from him, but her eyes hardened immediately, her body taking on the pose of somebody ready for a struggle.

"Poor, _poor_ baby. Underestimated by all of your big, macho mobsters. What an awful hand to be dealt . . . Tell me, do those rocks hanging off of your earlobes ease the pain in your repressed little heart?" Riley said nothing as Jack pushed her long curtain of blonde hair – straight, this time – away from her face. The diamonds on her ears sparkled gaudily. Real. Expensive. He wondered if she'd bleed much if he ripped them out. Or maybe the blood would come when he slammed her face into the counter and ran out to the first pawn shop he could find.

"Most days, yes. They do." Riley's hardened exterior relaxed and she leaned into him, turning the tables so that suddenly he wasn't grasping her with rough and bloody fingers but caressing her cheek in a tender manner. He dropped his hand immediately.

Her expression did not alter even after the rebuke, the drawback. "How old are you anyway, Initial Jay? You look nineteen or twenty."

"What a great guesser you are," he commented scathingly. Lied scathingly. He was seventeen in November, and it was only the beginning of September.

"So which is it, then?"

"What do you _think_ it is?"

Riley tapped her sharply filed nails against her bruised chin and then purred, "Well, I do confess that I have a weak spot for younger men. . . even if it is only by a couple of years. I suppose I'm a cougar in the making."

"And an adulteress in the making, if your body language is any indication of your future actions." To his mild surprise, Riley merely laughed.

"Or my past and present actions." She winked at him roguishly, her small, pouting lips spreading in a genuinely pleased smile. He stared at her blankly, keeping his face smooth and devoid of any sort of emotion.

Jack wasn't sure what she had in mind; he knew that she was flirting with him, trying to get him to suggest something, trying to get him to want her to suggest something. But for what reason, he didn't know. A trap, maybe. She might have been so infuriated by his obvious display of disrespect the last time that they had met that she had decided to take it upon herself to sic her mafia family on him. Which would explain the inquiries into his name, and the inappropriate openness of her. But he knew better. He hadn't lived in the Narrows almost all his life just to fall into some stupid trap set by the beaten wife of a mobster: never give out your name to anybody associated with the mob, and never mention anything personal that you care a wit about losing. And as much as Jack hated to admit it, he knew of two things he'd rather not lose.

So Jack just pushed her tab at her and waited for her next move. But it didn't come. Riley merely smiled at him softly and then slapped down a handful of crumpled bills, grabbing her bag of five steaks, just as before, and sashaying out of the store with an extra swing to her hips.

Jack didn't realize until he was counting out the money that she _had_ slipped one last move in . . . the same way she'd slipped an extra two hundred dollars into the jumbled mess of bills she had smacked down.

* * *

His mother had a new boyfriend. They had met, apparently, on the phone. During one of her late night phone calls to some business, wheedling them to buy large amounts of toner that they did not need. But Bill Whitting decided that even if his company didn't need toner, he needed the woman selling it. And so he had acquired her number and her home address, which was how, Jack surmised, he had ended up sitting on their couch with his legs spread out wide, a beer in one hand and his other resting on his crotch.

"Who the hell are you?" Jack demanded, slamming the door shut behind him and looking around for Lola. He shifted his leg to feel the reassuring coolness of the knife that he slipped into his sock every morning. It was something he did on instinct, whenever he thought something was shifty or he might need to defend himself. So far he'd only had to whip it out once, in a fight four on one, him being the one and the four being his classmates, who had ended up with their arms and legs sliced in several places. "And where is my sister?"

"I'm Bill. Yer mom's man."

"My mom's _man_? What does _that_ mean?"

Bill snorted and took a loud, gurgling drink from the can he clutched in his hand. Another drinker. Fantastic. "What're you, stupid 'er somethin'? It means we're seein' each other."

"My mom isn't home. In case you haven't noticed. She won't be home for hours. What are you doing at my place?"

"It ain't _your _place. It belongs to yer mom. And me, now. I'm movin' in." He scratched absently at himself and let out a loud belch.

Jack took a few steps forward, staring down at this dirty intruder with dark eyes. The man shrunk visibly as Jack's shadow fell across him, and the thick, hammy fingers tightened around his beer can. Jack could see, on closer inspection, that the man had a very insipid face, with large, pale eyes and a wide, flabby mouth. He resembled, at first glance, a toad.

"Says _who_?"

His fingers trembled but then his resolved stiffened and he stood; the man obviously didn't enjoy staring up at his girlfriend's son. Jack noted with smugness that he had a good three inches on the man. Bill's frame was stocky and heavyset, with extra weight in the gut and neck but with what looked like capable arms. No way they'd be able to throw a punch like his dad could, though.

"Says me. Me 'n yer mom's gunna be happy. She's had it rough, no thanks to you two ungrateful brats. I come in here earlier and yer little sis goes and runs off to somebody else's place 'fore I can even get more'en a sentence out."

"Oh," Jack said, feeling very proud of Lola for displaying such fine character. "So she's down the street."

He turned and snatched up his jacket without another word, striding out of his home and slamming the door on Bill's angry protestations. It was beginning to get cold, and the fall winds whipped through the Narrows with a brutal force. There were stray articles of clothing all over the streets, knocked off of clothes lines and blown about the alleyways. Jack had already lost at least two shirts, and he had almost lost that sweatshirt that the girl from down the street had given him. Luckily, it had snagged on a window ledge one floor down. Jack had had to crawl down the rusted fire escape to retrieve it. It rested at the bottom of the crate he kept his clothes in, now. He wasn't risking losing it again.

Jack knocked on the door to number twenty-five and waited impatiently for Lola or that girl to answer the door.

They didn't; that girl's mother did. She was rail thin, her hair greying and sparse and her eyes nearly permanently bloodshot. There were traces of beauty about her; or, at least, you could tell that she used to be beautiful, once. Like that girl, except somewhat less so, in Jack's opinion. He had seen a picture of her during her "glory days" as a high class whore, and in his opinion she fell a bit short compared to her daughter. Her hair was brown, not black, and it didn't fall in those natural curls like that girl's did, and her face lacked that superior bone structure of those lucky enough to have the genes of the elite. Her eyes were blue, but they were filmy – they might have looked like that girl's eyes, once, but they didn't anymore.

"My sister's here?" Jack asked dully, stepping past the woman. She wrapped her threadbare robe around her body tighter and smiled up at him with slightly decaying teeth. When she spoke her voice was raspy, a by-product of the drugs she did.

"Of course, she's with Louise. In her room. But stay out here and talk with me for a sec, honey. I feel like we haven't had a word in years."

They hadn't. Jack liked it that way.

He didn't speak, but waited for her to say whatever it was she wanted to say, and for the second time that day he was aware of a pair of female eyes studying him. Except these weren't the eyes of Peyton Riley, beautiful mob daughter and only two or three years his senior. These were the eyes of that girl's mother, a notorious prostitute and drug addict. The mother of that girl, that girl who he had shoved up against a wall and dry fucked only a month before.

"My, but you're tall. And handsome! When Louise first started dragging you over here I never would have thought that you'd grow up to be such a handsome, handsome young man. Bruises all over your face . . . you looked half deformed, most of the time!" She laughed lightly, the laugh of an experienced whore. It was easy to tell why the degenerate men around the Narrows found her so appealing – she had all the mannerisms of the high class, and even some vestiges of the looks, as well. The only indication of her addiction was the quaver in her voice, and the twitching of her fingers as she stood in front of him.

"But in all seriousness, you _are_ such a good looking boy. And hardworking, too. It's such a shame . . . . Well. Such a shame that you have to deal with all you do. I judge you're gone from dawn til dusk most days, working and going to school."

Jack nodded jerkily, his mouth set in a thin line. He thought he might know where this would go . . .

That girl's mother pushed her sparse and wispy hair from her face and blinked up at him with eyes that probably used to stun anybody she looked at. They did nothing to Jack. "I'm just letting you know, sweetie, that if you ever feel you want to spend some of your hard-earned money on something for _you_ . . . . I'd work you over real nice. I'm a real stress reliever; you'd be amazed. And I'd even cut the price in half for the first time. Because you're such a close friend of my girl's."

Jack laughed, and he heard a quiet stirring of bodies moving within that girl's room. He had been expecting it, had known what might come, but to actually hear it from the woman's thinly lipped mouth . . . to actually listen to her gravelly, wrecked voice proposition _sex_, of all things. . .Coming from the woman who his father had been fooling around with months before, before he'd died. It was ludicrous.

"I don't need your services," Jack told her, still smiling. The woman look highly offended. He thought of Peyton Riley, and more specifically of that girl, and the way her skin had tasted. "I think I can . . . do . . . a lot better than you. For free."

The woman's eyes flashed in momentary anger, but she was obviously low on income because she kept on, smoothing her lined face into an expression of understanding. "If you're talking about Louise, honey . . . Listen, she might be pretty now, but I used to be, too. It don't last, trust me. How d'you think she'll look when she gets this age, huh? Like me, and I'm better than most. Besides, I know things that would make your toes curl . . . She's just a baby when it comes to things like this."

She reached out one unsteady hand to brush it along his arm but he pulled away, recoiling from the idea of her touch.

"I wouldn't know about how you used to look . . . or how you might have looked, if it wasn't for all those drugs you ingest on a daily basis." The expression of anger returned in full force, fueled by his rejection and his scorn. "But like I said, I don't need your services."

The first door in the hall opened and that girl stepped out, her eyes flickering between Jack and her mother with a furious, guarded look in her eyes. Jack noticed that her small hands were balled into fists at her side, and for the first time it seemed to make sense why she was constantly at his place. Trouble in paradise . . .

"What's going on? Jack?" she asked tightly.

Jack turned to her and took in her radiance. It was hard to believe that the woman could have ever believed that he would say yes to her offer when a girl like her daughter even _existed_, let alone sat in the very next room. Jack could hardly imagine wanting to fuck anyone other than that girl, ever.

"Oh nothing. Your mom was just . . . . propositioning." Jack smirked in her direction, expecting her to roll her eyes and invite him into her room. He was genuinely surprised when he saw that girl grit her teeth, her mouth twisted with revulsion and dislike. She strode forward, her eyes flashing as the silhouette of Lola appeared behind her, half hidden in shadows.

"I can't _believe_ you," that girl breathed, moving in front of Jack, as if to shield him. He nearly laughed at the gesture. "I can't _believe_ that you would actually stand in our living room with me in the next room and ask my _boyfriend_ to pay you for sex! Jesus . . . what is _wrong_ with you?"

Jack felt his eyebrows raise at the word 'boyfriend', but said nothing.

"I'm just trying to keep the bills paid, you selfish little bitch, and if you cared at all about keeping a roof over your head you'd be helping out!"

Jack looked over to Lola, and the two exchanged a very brief glance. He knew that she was thinking of all the nights he had been the one standing in front of a parent, in a showdown of willpower. In a way he was glad that this time they were both spectators.

"I already told you that there is _no_ way I'm turning tricks to support your addiction to blow!" Jack's head snapped back and stared down that girl, who was nearly shaking with rage. But suddenly the situation was far less amusing; far less interesting. Suddenly he was seeing dark, blurry pictures of that girl sighing as some faceless shape of a man moved against her in the same way he had one month ago. "And you go ahead and snort us out of house and home . . . I don't have to stay with you. I'm seventeen years old. I'll just move in with Jack."

That girl's mother glared at the two of them viciously, with the hunched shoulders and desperation of a drug-addicted whore; any remainder of gentle beauty or grace were gone in an instant.

"And what happens when he loses interest, huh? What will you do once he fucks you and leaves you with his little bastard to haul around for the rest of your life? Don't come running back to me! I won't hear it! I've warned you . . ."

Jack looked at that girl, feeling like he was at a tennis match. Her face was flushed with fury and she was still trembling with the adrenaline of an argument. This sort of anger on her fascinated him. She wasn't like the other girls in the Narrows, who would swear up and down and throw their limbs around, and throw themselves at whoever they were arguing with, hair and nails flying. This was the sort of distinguished rage that you didn't see in places like this; and in a way it was even more intimidating than the overly physical display that people so often took part in. Because you could tell by just looking at her that she was better than it all. Better than everyone.

He wanted very much to touch her, run his fingers over her trembling skin until she was shaking for an entirely different reason; wanted to turn that anger and frustration around and focus it on a different sort of outlet.

"Jack and I aren't like you and dad. He'd not paying me to be with him. He cares about me."

The woman laughed shrilly and said, "If he really loved you, he'd be willing to pay!"

That girl shook her head and stepped backwards, pressing her back up against Jack's chest. Her hand reached out and found his, gripping it tightly as she flung out the final blow.

"You're jealous of me. Because I'm young and I'm pretty, and somebody loves me, and you're old and foul and ugly, and you have no one who cares. You have no idea what real love is."

The furious strength of the woman broke at those words, her body sagging and the savage light in her eyes extinguishing like a snuffed candle. Jack watched her minutely, studying every inch of her face as she stared at her daughter, the living reminder of how her life had failed, and then turned and stumbled out of the apartment. The door swung shut behind her, leaving one eerily quiet room and a heavily breathing girl.

"_Weeell,_" said Jack finally, clucking his tongue against the side of his mouth. "Does anybody else get the feeling there are a lot of unnecessary adults hanging around, lately?"

Lola raised her hand in the hallway, looking at that girl with apprehension in her wide eyes. Her shoulders were heaving and her jaw was clenched so tightly it looked painful. She looked ready to cry. Jack really hoped she didn't. She'd hardly ever cried in front of him, and never hard. Only a few times, a few tears, when Lola was seriously ill and showing it. And they were wiped away quickly, just as soon as Jack was about to express his disgust with her weakness.

"Lola, go into that room," Jack ordered. Lola opened her mouth to retort angrily but Jack silenced her with one hard glare. She turned and stomped back into the room she'd just come out of, slamming the door behind her and leaving Jack and that girl standing alone.

He didn't have any reason to postpone what he wanted to ask, and he didn't care if she was upset. At least if he brought it up now it'd be all out and over with, as opposed to bringing it up again later once the entire ordeal was over and done with.

"She's been asking you to turn tricks?"

That girl turned to look up at him with half-furious, half-ashamed eyes. There was a moment of suspended uncertainty about how things would go – would she scream and fight with him, or would she calm down and let him take control of the conversation? – before her shoulders slumped and she leaned into him wearily, answering the question for him.

"Yes," she murmured against his chest. "She's been telling a bunch of men in the city about me. Showing them pictures. Telling them I'm a virgin. Trying to sell me."

Jack felt his body stiffen, the dark visuals filling his mind like a poisonous gas. His hand gripped hers tightly, so tightly that she gasped out in pain and wrenched away from him.

"So, how much did they, uh, _offer_?" Jack asked acidly. That girl stared up at him in shock.

"What – You're not actually mad at _me_, are you?" Jack said nothing, and that girl let out a sharp breath of disbelief. "Come on, Jack . . ."

"You didn't answer my question."

She shook her head and drug her fingers through her hair. She looked mentally and physically exhausted.

"Fine. Fine! One of them offered ten thousand. Some hotshot lawyer. All right? Are you happy now that you've heard, Jack?"

It didn't make him happy. It made him so angry his vision blurred. He wished he could rig up all of Gotham City and blow it sky high; wipe all of those men, those men who stared at her and who would offer her money immediately if they knew she was for sale, completely off of the map. If only it was just him and that girl and Lola together, sitting around snacking and laughing and watching T.V., and maybe just him and that girl sneaking off together later in the night and pressing against each other . . . then things would be perfect. If it was just the three of them alive in all of the city, everything would be perfect.

That girl stared down at her shoes and crossed her arms, something about the slight twitching of her lips and the shifting of her limbs conveying a sort of . . . guiltiness. Jack studied her intently, reaching out and capturing her chin in his hand and forcing her to look up at him. It was easy to read in the clear blue; he thought he knew how a Seer must feel, looking into a crystal ball and seeing everything laid out right in front of them. He read the shame in her eyes just like a Seer reading a crystal ball for the future.

"You _considered_ it."

It was an accusation, but it was more than that. He felt winded. As if somebody had just got a very well placed kick to his gut in during a fight. Jack felt like shaking her, swearing at her, hitting her. He wanted to split the slow-healing scabs on his knuckles wide open against the delicate bones of her face. He wanted to feel his jealousy seep out of his hands, sticky and hot and bitter, just the way it felt churning in his stomach.

She didn't try to deny it. "Christ, of course I did . . . Ten thousand dollars. Do you know what that could _do_? I've been thinking about it for months." Jack's fingertips tingled, almost crying out to collide with her pale skin. He curled his hand up into a fist, squeezing so hard that his knuckles split open and began to bleed. "You've been working so, so hard at that awful butcher's shop and I've just been sitting around doing _nothing_! And then I found out I could lighten your load by so much by just . . . . doing something so . . . so . . ."

"_Easy_?" Jack suggested bitterly. "_Meaningless?_"

That girl struggled for words, and the desire to hit her grew to a fever pitch inside of him.

"No. No . . . I always thought that it'd be with . . . you. I've always wanted it to be with you." That girl didn't look at him, and Jack felt some of the anger drain from him at this admission. "And I couldn't do it, really. When it came down to it. I couldn't let some disgusting, perverted old man touch me. But I just couldn't stop thinking about how selfish I was being, keeping ten thousand dollars away from you and Lola because of my _morals_."

She shook her head and drug her hands over her face, looking up at him pleadingly.

"Please don't be angry with me, Jack."

He was. He was still so angry that he thought he would probably snap and smack her if she said one thing more about sleeping with other men. But then she reached out and splayed her hands across his chest, palms flat, her right one positioned directly over his heart.

Still, even with the fury draining out of him like it was, like she was channeling it through her body with her palms, he felt he had to make it clear to her. One hand shot out and entangled itself into her dark hair, clutching roughly and pulling her to him. Her mouth was open in a gasp of pain when he slammed his lips down onto hers, relishing the way she felt like a rag doll in his arms; the way she couldn't help but go limp as he kissed her. When he pulled away her eyes were half closed and hazy with the same sort of longing he had seen one month ago in his bathroom.

"You're mine." He stared down at her and gave her a little shake to guarantee her undivided attention. "Understand?"

"As long as you're mine," she breathed, "I'm yours."

He hated that she'd had to make that distinction, that she hadn't just agreed with him like he wanted her to, but for now it was enough. For now.

"Ya know, it's _rude_ ta leave a sick girl all alone just so you can make out!" Lola's voice shouted through the hall, her head peeking out from the door to that girl's bedroom and her lips pouted.

Jack sighed gustily, releasing that girl with a soft little push that left her swaying where she stood. He didn't wait for her to follow him as he joined Lola in that sky blue room; she was sitting on the bed moodily, her arms crossed and her chest rising and falling in the jagged, uneven way that was unique to her.

"Did you see that thing in our house?" Lola demanded as soon as he entered, lowering himself onto a rickety swivel chair with a broken back.

"Yep."

Lola clucked her tongue impatiently, staring at him intently. That girl slipped into the room, smoothing her hair back from her face and taking a seat on top of her dresser, her legs dangling and her hands folded in her lap. "And?"

"And what?" Jack snapped, momentarily distracted by the flash of pure white thigh he had seen as that girl hopped up onto her perch.

"He's gross. I don't want him around, Jack. He looked at me funny." Lola shook her head and looked to that girl. It was clear they'd already been discussing this before he arrived.

Jack spread his hands out on his legs and tapped restlessly. "I can't do anything about it. If mom wants to drag some dirtbag into the house then that's her prerogative. I'm never home anyway."

"Which is exactly what I told you, Lola," that girl put in. "It might make things a little better . . . at least your mom won't be so unhappy all the time, now."

"But it's only been a coupla months!" Lola protested, her breaths coming sharper. "Dad's only been gone – for a – coupla – months."

"Stop working yourself up," Jack commanded sharply, and Lola took several deep breaths to calm herself. "You know how she is. She's obsessed with being loved. Did you expect her to be alone for long? She stayed with Dad for years even though he beat her up every night because she can't stand the thought of being on her own."

Lola said nothing but she looked visibly put out. Jack didn't know what she thought he could do about the entire situation. The man might have been crude and ignorant, but he wouldn't dare touch either of them, Jack would make sure of that. He wasn't a skinny little boy anymore. Things were different, now. Things had changed forever. There was no reason he or Lola ever had to worry about any sort of man their mother brought home. Not anymore.

"But you're always gone. So I have ta be around him all the time."

Jack looked over to that girl, who interposed quickly. "But I'll be around. So you won't have to be alone around him."

"Jack makes me feel safer . . ."

Jack cut her off and ended the conversation decisively with one simple line: "You don't have any reason to be worried about some unimportant slob like that, so stop it."

And she did, clamping her mouth shut and resting her body back onto the bed wearily, as if she were handling a diamond vase instead of her own limbs. But Jack figured that she really was that breakable; that fragile. One drop, one crash, and she'd be shattered forever. Emotionally, physically, anything . . . she was far too delicate for Jack's liking. Jack turned away from the sight of all of that weakness and focused instead on the smooth, unmarked skin of that girl's long legs, crossed at the ankles and dangling. At least that girl had some sort of resolve in her; at least she could strike out with that hidden reserve of strength she kept tucked away inside. He hated it sometimes, but it was better than her being completely helpless.

She was still wearing her uniform skirt, even though she'd long changed into a thin black sweater. She'd been wearing the same outfit two nights after that day one month ago, when she'd slipped into his room while he was trying to sleep. It had been late again, and at first when she shook him awake he couldn't quite understand why his dream felt so incredibly real that night. Her voice had sounded especially clear and soft when he compared it to the late night raspiness of his own.

"_Hey."_

"_Hi . . ."_

"_You were sleeping. I'm sorry I woke you up. I just wanted to talk."_

"_Sure . . ."_

"_I've never seen you sleep before. Did you know that? Isn't it crazy? It seems like I should have seen you sleeping before. Like really sleeping, not just dozing off, because I've seen you doze off tons of times on my couch when Lola makes us watch those favorite movies of hers over and over again. But you actually in bed, sleeping, I've never seen. Your legs are too long for such a small bed. You sleep all scrunched up, which can't be good for your spine, because –"_

"_Whoa . . . Just . . . . What?"_

He'd had to stop her rambling and blink several times to clear his head in order to grasp the situation. It still hadn't felt real even after that, because who would have ever imagined that girl sitting on the edge of his tiny bed in the middle of the night? Not him. Unless he happened to be dreaming, which he'd been sure he was, even after several blinks and a yawn or two. She'd stopped talking immediately, taking a large breath and then staring at him in a determined sort of way.

"_Jack . . ."_

The tone of her voice had been soft, velvety, a caressing husk that left Jack's throat too tight to respond immediately. And her hand had reached out and trailed smooth fingertips over the planes of his face, making it hard to breathe, even. She'd been so close to him, and in his bed . . .

"_Jack, I . . . I felt like I needed to talk. After what happened between us the other night."_

Jack had said nothing, entirely distracted by the way her palm had come to rest at the base of his neck, her thumb outstretched and pressed lightly against the hollow of his throat.

"_We hardly said a word to each other afterwards. I just wanted to come in here and make sure that things were . . . all right between us. That things aren't going to be weird."_

"_You're talking like you never want it to happen again . . . Like you regret it."_

"_No! No . . . It was . . ."_

_Perfect, incredible, mind-blowing_ he'd longed for her to say, but she'd swallowed heavily and continued raspily, her voice wavering. Embarrassed.

"_It was really nice. I love being so . . . so close to you. Like that." _

The hand situated against the flushed skin of his neck had twitched with nervousness, and the breath she exhaled before speaking was uneven and tight.

"_I'd like it if we were even closer. As close as we can be. Maybe, if you want, we could . . . sleep together. Maybe in a few months . . . around your birthday."_

Jack was sure that if he'd been able to see her, her skin would have turned a brilliant shade of red. Her hand had fell away from him, returning to her own lap where she twisted them together nervously. He'd been frozen, his voice caught somewhere in his throat. He'd hardly trusted himself to speak; hardly knew if he could.

"_Only if you wanted, I mean. . . . Do you?"_

He'd forced himself to respond, to snatch up the offer while it was still good. He'd been terrified that at any moment she would change her mind, recede, tell him that she'd been acting crazy, gone out of her mind. And even worse, he'd been afraid that at any moment he might wake up to find it had all been a dream. His voice had been harsh, raspy, discordant in the quiet and especially so when you compared it with the melodious tones of that girl's.

"_Yes. Yes, I do."_

He'd wanted to say it a thousand times over, wanted to write it down and sign it in blood so neither of them could go back on their word. But she'd just leaned forward and kissed him furiously, and then, just as his head had begun to swim and their breath had started to come harsh and fast, she had pulled away, slipped from his bed and out of his room without another word.

He still wasn't sure what to think of the situation. Part of him considered it all as something unlikely to ever actually happen. Another part could hardly breathe when he thought about it, his throat constricting and his chest contracting until he felt like he could actually choke on the longing he felt. And yet another part was merely interested in how things would play out with a detached sort of fascination. Like he was watching somebody else's life and not his own.

He supposed the reason why he had gotten so angry at her for considering that ten thousand dollar offer was because he was certain – and terrified – that what she had proposed they do would never happen. He felt like it was an impossibility, something that wasn't meant to be, something that would be going against fate if it played out. Because things like that – good things, unbelievably _normal_ things like sex and love and happiness – didn't happen to him. He got the rest – poverty and sickness and death and abuse all rolled up into one neat little package. And that was all right, because he could deal with it. But this . . . He _wanted _this. He wanted it more than he'd wanted anything in his life, short of Lola recovering.

He didn't think he could handle another colossal disappointment.

* * *

A/N: Okay. So last chapter = not impressive? It got the least number of reviews of the whole story, so far. Still a lot, of course, and I'm grateful for each and every one, and of course dwindling reviews won't deter me from posting, but it did make me a little . . . self-conscious, I guess? Uncertain that I was still catching anybody's attention. I dunno, you tell me? Still interested, readers? I hope I'm not losing you! Thanks to all the reviewers so far: **crystalstars88, theatre-gypsy, Cullenista1, peacefulgrace, Misplaced Levity, V Evey, Ignatius J Reilly, Simplelover15, Jack's girl, xXSarcasmIsMyWeaponxX, Janice, NicoleDesFetes, liVe-yOur-fAntasY, RedWatch, Isabeau de Foix, Strawberry Flames, .., **and **mandya1313. **

Hopefully I didn't miss anyone. Really guys, your reviews are incredible! Keep 'em coming, please.

So anyway, in this chapter you see I've mentioned Jack's mother, which a few of you mentioned in your reviews, asking where she was. She'll be in the story more in the next few chapters. And, unfortunately, so will the disgusting Bill. More in store for both of those characters.

Tell me what you think! Or assure me that you're not getting bored? Anything is appreciated!


	8. Chapter 8

Every Friday afternoon Peyton Riley stopped in at the shop Jack worked in and ordered five frozen steaks wrapped individually and bagged. Once she tried to mix it up and order veal, but Jack had merely stared her straight in the face and laughed until she demanded her five steaks and the bill. He was still laughing as she swept out of the shop, all feminine wiles forgotten in the face of his scornful mirth.

But any other day it was there in full force. The feminine wiles. Every Friday she stopped in and stared at Jack with an astute gaze and a contradictory benevolent smile plastered on her beaten face. He had only seen her without bruises once, the week after she had slipped the two hundred dollars to him as a "tip". Though he didn't necessarily want to become involved with Peyton Riley and her mob money, Jack was neither noble nor stubborn enough to deny two hundred dollars when it was freely given and could do some help. He took the money and put it towards Lola's hospital bills, which were growing and growing every month as she got sicker and sicker. He had said nothing to Riley about the money, just like he didn't say anything about the money that she slipped to him the next time, or the next. And it kept going like that, again and again. She would slip him two, three, four hundred dollars, and he would take it without thanks or even any outward sign that he had received an extra cent. It infuriated her. She expected, no doubt, some sort of wild, impassioned thank-you at the least.

It was the first of November and Jack was preoccupied. He didn't feel like entertaining whatever game Riley was trying to play and when she walked in he did his best to slip out the back door. His boss caught him and threatened to fire him unless he got back up to the counter. Riley would take her steaks from nobody else, and if he happened to absent when she was present, his boss blamed him personally for the loss of thirty-five dollars that came with her business.

"What's wrong, Initial Jay? You don't look happy to see me." Riley smiled at him thinly. Jack noticed an especially nasty cut that ran down the side of her neck, stretching from just behind her right ear and sweeping in a graceful arc beneath of her jaw. It was thin, likely made by the very tip of an especially sharp knife, but it marred the smoothness of her skin and would doubtless leave a sizeable scar.

"I guess you can say that I'm not in the mood to play the cat to your mouse, today." Jack set the bag of steaks down in front of her and bent down wearily to retrieve the billing pad. He felt Riley's eyes follow him in the act, the gaze burning on his skin.

"Who said you're the cat?" She raised one unusually imperfect eyebrow_. _It occurred to Jack that perhaps they were both equally exhausted.

With effort, Jack forced himself to respond back. He was tempted, sorely, to just demand her money and then stride away. But however late he'd been kept up by Lola's coughing or by thoughts of how "two months" had turned into "any time, now", he couldn't drive away the intriguing mystery that she presented. He tapped his fingers tiredly against the counter, the beat sluggish and dull.

"Who else would it be? Unless you're going to tell me that it was a 'cat' that gave you that pretty little scratch on your neck?" Riley said nothing, staring at him with flat eyes and a statuesque figure. Jack sighed heavily and continued, "What'd you do, burn dinner?"

He tapped twice on the bag of steaks. Riley licked her lips absently and replied, with that same blank expression, "No."

Jack shrugged apathetically at her meager response and pushed her bill at her. She stared down at it for a full minute, at least, before taking up the pen in her hand and scribbling down what resembled, from Jack's vantage point, an address. Riley finished her scrawl and then ripped off the bottom of the bill, pushing the paper towards him and leaning in very close over the counter.

"It's where I want you to meet me. Tomorrow, nine p.m."

He stared down at the slip of jagged-edged paper in his hands; the cheap, recycled paper that was so flimsy it nearly disintegrated in your hands, with the sort of equally cheap ink that rubbed off on your fingertips and got everywhere over the course of the day. Once, that girl had noticed a dark smudge of it on his lip and used her thumb to wipe it off. They had stood staring at one another for a full five minutes after the ink was gone, mesmerized by something that Jack couldn't even begin to analyze or understand.

"Why would I do that?" he asked, squinting to discern the address that was scrawled in large, looping letters, so overly-flowery that they were nearly as hard to read as his messy, uncaring scratches. It was to a warehouse known back in the day for its affiliation with the Irish mafia, though if he remembered correctly it had been all but vacant for the past few years. Ever since the Sabatinos took over the Narrows.

Riley leaned in still further and lowered her voice to a quiet hush, barely audible over the hacks and bellows coming from the back of the shop. "I see it in your eyes – the desperation. It's getting to you. This life. You can go two ways, Jay. If you go the first way you'll fall into oblivion. You'll drink and you'll gamble and you'll steal and you'll starve and you'll be so unhappy that you'll wish every goddamn day that you had it in you to take up that gun you keep as 'protection' and put it to the side of your head. That's option one. The second way you can gois the way that hardly anybody that grows up in a place like this has enough guts or brains to follow through with. Them people don't sit around and wait for things to come to them. They don't have any sort of idiotic ideas about wrong and right. They know that if they want anything they have to go out and _force_ somebody to give it to them. And they're clever. They'll do it, get what they want, in any way they can. You're that type. I've had you pegged from the minute I walked in here and you talked back to me."

Jack considered Riley's words silently; the tautness of her lips and the feverish glint in her eye that told him she wasn't merely having him on but was actually completely absorbed in her belief that he was part of that second, elusive group she spoke of. He hated to admit that she was right, but it seemed she had hit the nail straight on the head – those two types of people were all that made up the Narrows. And it was obvious to tell which ones took the second path – they were the ones like the Sabatinos and Rileys, who had built empires out of fear and influence. They were the con artists and unscrupulousthieves. They were all powerful, in charge of their own destinies, their own lives. It was something that so few of the people who lived in poverty could say, and it was something that Jack wanted desperately.

"We can help each other," said Riley, her voice hushed but emphatic.

Jack took another look at the piece of paper in his hand before he folded it up and slid it into his pocket. He looked up at Riley's eyes, almost wild in their intensity, and kept his voice level as he replied, "That'll be thirty-five even."

* * *

He didn't arrive home until twenty minutes past midnight that night. His arms were practically seized up from all the lifting he had been forced to do – crates upon crates of new meat that had to be unloaded and then reloaded and then opened and chopped and skinned and hung and on and on and on. There was a sharp, stabbing pain just behind his right eye and he stunk horribly of blood and guts and sweat. The mood he was in could almost be paralleled to demonic possession in the eyes of the majority of society. And beyond that, he could not stop inserting his hand into the pocket of his jeans and curling his fist around that flimsy piece of paper, thoughts of Peyton Riley's emotional whisper still echoing in his mind:

"_We can help each other . . ."_

But how could she, the unnoticed trophy wife of a mob boss who cared more about decorating her with scars than privileges and devotion, help him?

_She's rich_.

But self-absorbed, obviously. Jack wasn't fool enough to believe that anything she did was for his benefit – she would get something out of their partnership, possibly to the point where she would willingly throw him under the bus – or in front of the barrel of a gun – if the opportunity arose and she had gotten her fill of his services, whatever they might be.

_She's influential._

And aligning himself with her could be dangerous, stupid . . . or just what he needed to break out of this cycle of needless dependency on others. He could finally be in charge of his own assets. Make his own money and his own connections.

_Her affiliation is dangerous._

But worth it?

He wasn't sure. He was beginning to believe that it might be, and the glimmering diamonds that had hung from her ears danced across his vision every time he blinked. Jack even allowed himself to ponder briefly on how that girl's face might look if he presented her with earrings like Riley's . . . or maybe a fur coat, something made out of fox or mink. And Lola's hospital bill would be paid off, and he'd be able to afford to take her to a real hospital and never have to scrimp on treatment again. She'd get the best care. She'd get better again . . . .

The recycled paper felt like a golden ticket in his palm.

"Oh, Jack, there ya are."

His eyes flickered up and he wasn't able to completely extinguish the scorching mania that he knew burned in them. Luckily, it wasn't that girl speaking to him – it was his mother, sitting at the kitchen table with her hands wrapped around a steaming cup of coffee and her blonde hair tousled.

There was a moment when the entire universe seemed to implode upon itself, because Jack knew that his mother was _never_ home at this time of the night, never, not since the night after his father had been pronounced dead . . .

"What are you doing home? What are you doing here?"

His mother looked up at him curiously, bag-afflicted eyes puffy but distinctly without the lines of grief that would be indicative of another death . . . Lola's death . . .

"I took tha night off. Imma little sick and Bill wanted ta take care'ah me . . ." A ghost of a smile flitted across her weary face, and Jack had the wild impulse to knock the coffee cup over, spilling burning hot liquid all over his mother's face and neck and arms.

"_Bill_," Jack repeated icily. "Right. And while I've got you here I might as well ask . . . since when does _Bill_ live here and make the rules?"

Her dark eyes flashed indignantly. "Ya oughta be more grateful for Bill, Jack," she scolded, "Lola needs a strong male role model – somebody has ta take ya dad's place."

"Because it's common knowledge that there aren't _any_ other older, hardworking males in this household besides _Bill_." He spread his bloodied hands out wide with a sneer of contempt, but his mother just shook her head in exasperation.

The coffee mug was set down with a clunk, one hand passing over a slightly lined brow. "Stop makin' Bill out ta be the villain here, Jack. Just 'cus ya dad died doesn't mean ya can become tha man of tha house. You're not a man yet – ya still justa boy. Bill can be a fatha figya, he can –"

"He can keep you company at night and fill that needy little hole in your heart that cries out for constant attention, that's the only thing _Bill_ is good for," Jack spat; he had become immediately infuriated at the word 'boy' used in relation to him. _Boys_ don't work all afternoon and night slicing up animal carcasses; _boys_ don't get propositioned by whores and mob daughters. He was not a boy. "If you thought of anybody but yourself you'd realize that your kids don't _want_ a replacement – especially not Lola. She hates him being around."

"Where did all this angah come from, Jack?" His mother's voice shook but she did not rise from the chair. Her face was smoothed into an unreadable expression, her head tilted back slightly as she looked up at him. Something about the nervous twitching of her fingers and the expectant hunch of her shoulders – as if she were anticipating a blow – reminded him of nights long ago when it was a different man towering over her, and Jack was merely a spectator. "Ya look just like'im . . . just like ya fatha. . ."

Jack stepped back, fingers clenching and lips twisting. He wanted to act like his father, then – he wanted to feel his fist collide with the side of her small, fragile head; he wanted to beat the submission and frailty out of her until she had had enough and finally stood up for herself. After all those years of wondering why it was his father had hit his mother, he finally saw – that look in her eyes, that expression of complete helplessness, just _begged_ for it.

"I am _not_ like him." A defiant shake of the head and then another disgusted sneer, and his mother was cowering in her chair. But she did not stand, she did not speak out . . . she only waited. And she represented, suddenly, everything Jack despised. One hand delved deep inside of his pocket and fisted around that already crumpled piece of paper. His father was trapped in this life by his addiction to alcohol and his mother was unwilling to do what it took to rise up and make things work for herself, but Jack wouldn't be like them – he could break away from all of this. He could change things for himself, and for Lola. He could do the things his parents were always too weak to accomplish, to fight for.

"I'm not. You'll see. I'm not like him."

All he needed was that one tiny slip of paper.

* * *

The warehouse was stuck back out of the main swing of things, hidden halfway behind a run-down tenant building well-known for housing those sorts who had the tendency to work for the Rileys. People didn't inhabit that tenant building long. Sometimes they died, sometimes they disappeared, sometimes they ran, and sometimes they just got enough money to be able to afford some place better.

The building itself was as run down and derelict as the rest of the buildings that he lived around. There was no difference he could see on the rusted metal doors or the windowless walls that would indicate that powerful people sat inside and planned the deaths and usurpation of equally powerful people. But Jack knew well enough after all this time that what you saw wasn't always what you got.

There were no bodyguards standing out front, something that the Sabatinos had at all times. It was obvious which mob had more power, more influence, and most importantly, more followers ready and willing to die for them. And while it wasn't perfect or by any means an easy fix to his problems, Jack figured that even a mob that had fallen into second place was better than no mob at all – they could at least get him _some_ money. Besides, there was always Riley, whose burning eyes had made Jack believe things were possible that he would never have believed were before.

Two hard bangs on the grimy front door, a padlocked, graffiti-ed hunk of metal that was caked with at least an inch of dirt, and Jack felt that maybe this was the beginning of something big for him, something that might change everything.

A black man of intimidating proportions swung the door open, standing tall at six four at the very least, with shoulders wider than two-and-a-half of Jack's. The man's large, flat face was organized into an expression of complete deterrence.

"Wat'chu want?" the man growled. It was unsettling for Jack to have to look up at somebody; usually he was the one towering over people. He found that he didn't like the feeling.

"Peyton Riley," he said, unwilling to be intimidated despite the man's size. In his mind he ran through several possible ways to attack the man and use his weight and height against him, if the situation turned nasty. It was better, he rationalized, to sift through all of the 'what-ifs?' than to be caught unaware. "I have an . . . appointment."

The man's black eyes glowed with distrust. Jack felt annoyed that Riley hadn't bothered to tell her solo guard dog to stand down.

"Wat'chu want wit Missus Riley? She ain't tellin' nobody she be expectin' gists."

"Well I'm not exactly a guest . . . Let me in, would you? I'd rather not stand around in plain sight."

The black man drew himself up and crossed heavily muscled arms, the square jaw tightening with disapproval and mistrust. From inside of the building there came the sharp click of heels against hard floor, and then a cool, familiar voice emanated out from behind the massive bulk of the body guard.

"It's all right, Willie. I asked him here." The man turned his head to look behind him but stayed blocking the door, his brow furrowed with confusion and indecision, as if he wasn't quite sure if he should move out of the way. "Really, Willie, it's fine. He's . . . well, you can say he's a friend of ours."

A shockingly white and delicate hand rested against the ebony skin, and Willie backed slowly away from the entrance, dark eyes still trained on Jack as he stepped inside of the warehouse and closed the door sharply behind him. The interior was comfortable, with the air and appearance of a smokey barroom at around six in the morning, just after last call. Old moth-eaten chairs and couches were scattered across the floor, along with several billiard and card tables and a large store of what looked like dusty liquor bottles lining one wall. Everything stunk of disuse and abandonment.

"We don't come here often anymore. It's mostly a place that daddy keeps for our use if ever we need it . . . . Johnny runs the Narrows now, and he only sets up in the best." She sniffed and stood near Jack, her heels elevating her to within an inch of his height. "An old Irish-connected hideout isn't enough for the mighty Sabatinos."

The black man named Willie shook his head and grunted, one giant gorilla-like fist clenching until the thick knuckles cracked menacingly. "Maybe ol' Willie should go on ova' 'dair and teach him tuh havuh lil' respect."

"Willie's been with our family for years. He came up from Alabama when he was sixteen, didn't you Willie? Daddy took him in. He's the loyalest soul you'll ever meet. Completely dedicated to the Rileys and the Rileys alone." Riley looked up at the massive man with a look of unprecedented softness in her steel-likened eyes. "Unswayed by the oily charm of my stinking husband, isn't that right Willie?"

"I kin tell when a man ain't no good, and he ain't no good."

Riley gestured over to one of the chairs in an obvious invitation to sit and make himself comfortable. Jack wasn't very inclined to accept – he felt better standing, especially if Willie was going to be hovering over them all evening. He was still unsure as to why he'd been invited here and he didn't want to be caught sitting on his ass when he needed to be on his feet.

Riley must have sensed this unwillingness because she shrugged and moved over to the liquor wall, opening one dusty cabinet and pulling out a corked decanter of deep red liquid.

"Dauvissat. My favorite. This is the last of the bottle I opened to celebrate my engagement . . ." Riley uncorked the top and brought the decanter to her nose to inhale deeply. Her eyelids fluttered and the softened expression on her face returned, accompanied by a sort of horrible sadness that flickered across her features briefly before being replaced with that savage, animalistic manifestation that was so apt to show itself. She corked the wine and replaced it with the utmost care and then turned a distinctly sharp-edged smile at Jack. "I'm saving the rest for the funeral."

"Whose?" Jack queried, moving closer to the place where Riley stood. Willie followed his steps, hands crossed over his chest and his face hard as he watched Jack's progression across the room.

"My husband's." That steely, wild glint was back. In the dim lighting of the warehouse she looked like a beautiful zombie, ready to devour the flesh of the living. "I'm hoping I won't have to wait much longer . . . Would you like anything to drink, by the way?"

If she meant to shock him it hadn't worked. The declaration that she wished her husband dead was something entirely drab and uninteresting to Jack. It was obvious from the way she spoke his name and by the bruises he left on her cheeks that the two of them abhorred one another. In fact, Jack had toyed with the idea that Riley had lured him here in order to coerce him into killing Johnny Sabatino. And Jack couldn't say that the thought had been disgusting to him. He had already decided that, if it was the case, his answer would depend entirely on the price that came attached with it.

"I don't drink," Jack intoned, and Riley shot him an incredulous look.

"Well, well, Initial Jay . . . You are a basket full of surprises, aren't you?" Riley shot a pointed look at Willie, who was standing as unmoving as a gargoyle atop of an ancient castle. "I told you this one's different, Willie. Doesn't drink, works harder than any young man should, has a complete disrespect towards those in positions of power, and keeps his name hidden . . . a mystery."

"I dun't like no mystries, Missus. Ain't nothin' good neva' gwoina come from 'em."

A dusty clock that hung on one wall chimed as it struck ten o'clock, and Jack sighed. Exhaustion hung heavily on his mind and body, and even the excitement and anxiousness he felt concerning this meeting was proving to be wearying.

"It doesn't matter whether or not I'm a mystery. What matters is the reason you asked me here. How we're going to help each other, if we even can." Jack licked his lips and then shrugged at the silence which accompanied his statement. "I don't like, uh, _wasting_ my time. I'm pretty busy, see? So let's get on with this."

Riley scratched absently at the thin scratch on her jaw as she went to take a seat in a chair, once again motioning for Jack to sit. Once again he refused to move and he heard Willie's knuckles crack from beside him.

"Let's get right to the point then, Jay." Jack felt the tension in his neck and shoulders release as they began to proceed. "I want you to work for me. Or, actually, for my husband."

There was silence, a heavy shock that filled the room and let Jack know that he was not the only stunned person standing in this abandoned warehouse.

"And how would that work out for the both of us?" Jack asked, narrowing his eyes. The proposition was confusing and suspicious at the least – unless Riley expected him to act as her personal advocate and protector from her tyrant husband (which was suicide), he had no idea what the point would be.

The wicked glint was stronger now, her shoulders hunching forward as she readied herself to explain her master plan, something that Jack was beginning to fear would turn out to be lackluster and impossible, and probably pathetic.

"I think you've got brains, Jay. Real cunning, you know? Johnny has generated a lot of respect and he's a real hotshot when it comes to flailing a gun around and acting the part of the mobster with big shoes to fill, but he hasn't got the fire in his eyes that you do. And he doesn't got any real brains. I can tell you're smarter than half the goons Johnny's got running around at his beck and call. Right now someone like you . . . someone smart and desperate for the sort of money the mob could get you . . . is priceless to him. He'd take you right in. You want money, don't you? Johnny can give you money. Thousands of dollars in cash, or in drugs, or in whores and good food, whatever way you wanna take it."

Jack wasn't interested in whores and good food, or in any sort of drugs that could be shipped into this godforsaken place, but he was interested in money . . . thousands of dollars at a time, and for what? For running around and transporting drugs to and from destinations on behalf of the Sabatino crime family? Maybe selling some; maybe hustling others up for money they owed on it? It seemed so easy, too easy, and there was definitely something missing . . .

"And for you? What do you get out of this . . . 'bargain'?"

Riley laughed shrilly, her voice high and breathless in its excitement. "You! Aren't you listening, Jay? You're smarter than them all. You're craftier, I can tell. And I know, I can see it in your eyes . . . you're ruthless. It wouldn't take long to take control, to get Johnny's followers to follow _you_ instead, see? And me, of course, since I'm the woman behind the curtain here. And once you do that, the only thing that stands in the way of taking over the entire organization is . . . Johnny."

Jack felt a sick little smile tug at the corners of his lips. There was something perversely satisfying about guessing correctly on such a topic. "So you want me to kill him, is that it?"

Riley blanched and her hands clenched reflexively. The words she spoke came out in a venomous hiss and she appeared, suddenly, more like a coiled snake than a woman. "No . . . no, _I_ want to kill him. But I can't do it alone. If Johnny ends up dead with all of his thugs still on his side, every finger will be pointing at me. They'll slaughter me. But if you go in and toy with a couple of minds . . . twist a couple of alliances . . . . distort a few loyalties . . . who's to say which of the mutineers sliced his throat open? Nobody will know, and by that point, hardly anybody will care."

Jack's thoughts traveled back to the day he had first seen Johnny Sabatino and Peyton Riley together, the latter being pulled down the steps of a church which had joined their hands in marriage just minutes before. The fire in her eyes was warranted, the thirst for her husband's blood acceptable when you considered those bruises he had marked her up with, but there was something she had passed over . . . some people she had passed by without seeing them on that day months ago.

"You're forgetting the rest of them. The Sabatinos. They don't call this a crime _family_ for nothing. Their loyalties won't be swayed. The elder Johnny Sabatino . . ."

"Dying. He got pneumonia in the winter and he hasn't been right since. He won't last much longer, and he's certainly in no position to be causing trouble for us. And as for the rest . . . there are more people outside of the family who work for Johnny than people inside of the family who do. And if we can outnumber them . . . ." Riley spread her hands wide and her tongue darted out to wet her lips, spasmodically, like the tongue of a serpent. Jack almost thought he could see a fork on the tip.

"I've thought out every possibility. Every single thing that could go wrong. I know something like this would be suicide if I didn't have the right person swinging for me . . . But I found _you_. They'll follow you, I'm sure of it. After Johnny, you'll look like a saint to them. He's always shouting and commanding and shooting his men dead the minute they do anything wrong. They're tired of him already. And if you offer to overthrow the Sabatinos and give _them_ more power, give _them_ a higher cut of the profit. . . You'll have them eating out of the palm of your hand." Jack stood and listened, his body unmoving but his mind racing with the words Riley was speaking. Her eyes were on fire, blazing out of control until Jack felt it was dangerous to look at them for fear he'd be consumed. But the things she said sounded possible . . . Sounded doable . . . And if he could, if he could possibly take down a mob family and put Riley and _himself_ in charge . . .

"Me and you, baby . . . We can take them down."

He was just desperate enough to try, even if it did end in the same sort of flames that roared out of control just behind the eyes of Peyton Riley.

"How much will I get for this? What will you give me?"

Riley's eyes smoldered at his question, and he felt as though she might strike out with her fangs.

"Is the promise of an entire mafia organization not enough for you?"

Jack did not hesitate to answer. "No. I need more, I need money _now_. If things don't turn out right –"

"Of _course_ they will! I've told you –"

Jack interrupted her, smothering her high-pitched voice with his own more powerful one. "_If _things don't turn out right . . . I need to know that it wasn't for nothing. I have . . . . things I need to take care of. If I end up at the bottom of a river courtesy of your darling husband, I need to know that I got something out of it before I got cozy with the fishes."

Riley sat silently, regarding Jack with a calculated, hard-as-flint gaze that made his skin tingle. Whether or not she accepted was none of his concern – he needed that money, and if he wasn't going to get it up front then there was no point to risk his life.

"Fine," she agreed finally. Jack couldn't suppress the satisfied smile that spread across his face. "Two thousand every couple of weeks, it's the most I can do. On top of whatever Johnny will be giving you . . . it should be more than enough."

It wasn't more than enough, but he didn't say that. She couldn't know, didn't need to know, that Lola's hospital bills were far past fifty thousand and growing as she got sicker.

"You aren't an addict, are you?" Riley demanded suddenly. The X-Ray glare was trained on him again, but he didn't flinch. She would find nothing, ever, by examining him. Even if she was staring him down two minutes after he shot up, she would still find nothing betrayed in his eyes.

"No."

Seemingly satisfied with the bland honestly in his answer, but still suspicious as to why he demanded so much money up front, Riley nodded her head minutely and then smirked with dawning pleasure.

"Perfect. See? You're perfect for this . . . We'll be on top in no time, Jay. You and me . . And then I'll finally have the sort of respect I've always deserved."

Willie spoke up with a voice that shook with fear and emotion. "Missus, I dun't think this uh good idea . . . You gwoina get yuhself killed! What wud yuh papa say to ol' Willie if he find out I jus' let'cha go 'n do dis stupid thing . . ."

Riley's face softened immediately, and her voice became as sweet as honey when she addressed the quaking black man. "Willie, darling . . . you know I can take care of myself. I'm smarter than half those men in their little boy's club . . . And with Jay, here, helping me . . . The only thing you need to worry about is keeping Jay safe. If he's safe, I'm safe."

Jack wanted to say that he didn't need any protection, but the desire for independence lost out when he thought of the monumental task set before him. Taking down a crime family of such status and influence wasn't going to be easy, would probably prove fruitless and impossible, and if he had a little brawn at his side it would only help his chances.

Willie looked over at Jack with pronounced uneasiness, but his jaw tightened and he nodded his head determinedly.

"'Din I sweah imma make sho' that nothin' bad happens tuh Mistuh Jay."

* * *

**A/N:** Cue dramatic music! Anyway, I'm not sure about this chapter. I'm very . . . iffy about it. I spent most of my time writing it shaking my fist at the screen and saying 'Damn you, New York accents! Damn you!' Still don't know if I got it right. Probably not.

Anywho, this is one of the first "mob-based" chapters that are pretty important to the progression of my story. As much as I love Louise and Lola, they can't be in every chapter. I think there are a couple where they are absent entirely. However, there will be a couple of new, colorful characters introduced, such as the "illustrious" Johnny Sabatino and a few of his devoted men. So hopefully you won't get bored? There's a LOT more to the first part of this story. I'm actually shocked with how it's all playing out. I'm sure I'll be boring the pants off of you guys by the time we get to the second part of the story!

But if I didn't quite manage to bore you to sleep in this chapter, then please use that last burst of energy to write a review and tell me what you thought of this chapter, Jack's mom, Riley's risky plan, and how you think Jack'll end up getting those scars carved onto his face. Any ideas as to who it'll be so far?

Oh, and special thanks to **I. Am. Doll. Parts**. for reviewing. I don't know why, but when I typed your name in with the reviewers as one joined together word, it erased it and there were only three little periods in a row in its place. Sorry, I swear I didn't forget you!


	9. Chapter 9

She had said, when he'd left, that she would get in touch with him to start things off. The days passed by and he waited, anxiously, angrily, impatiently – all of those things at once. There had been no contact from either Riley nor Willie as of yet, but he was holding out hope. It was his last chance, it had become his one saving grace. With the promise of a possible escape, albeit a dangerous and probably incredibly stupid escape, he found that everything else he had tried so very hard at meant nothing. School was meaningless, but that had always been the case. But now his job, with the menial wages he walked away with at the end of the week, seemed superfluous and trivial. And the ache in his arms and back and wrists didn't seem worth it when he compared it to the sort of money he might gain when he affiliated himself with the Sabatinos.

He was counting on this thing to go through. More than he liked. More than he wanted to admit.

It was night and Jack was trudging home at ten o'clock, his finger joints sore from the multitude of sausages he'd had to make that day – at least a mile of sausages, he was sure. All he wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep for years, and never use his hands again for anything.

He was halfway to his building when a lithe form pelted out from the side of a building and smacked square into him. Jack stumbled backwards and watched dizzily as the shape sprawled out onto the pavement, dark hair fanned out and white skin shining in the pale, smoggy moonlight. The girl looked like she was covered in stardust, and he knew immediately who it was.

"What the hell are you doing running all over the place?" Jack asked, reaching down to pull her up. Her body pitched forward against him, limp and pliant, and he got the feeling that she might have clocked herself on the head when she fell. Either that or she was completely incapacitated by his closeness, which was something that he would be happy to assume, unlikely as it would be.

Her head lolled backwards as she looked up at him. Moonlight illuminated her face and crystal tears dangled on dark eyelashes, suspended perilously, ready to fall. One of his roughly padded fingers drug across her cheek and brushed away a tear and she sighed, a heavy, tremulous sound, her lips quivering.

She buried her face against his chest and clung to him, sobs shaking her body and breath heating his skin through thin fabric as she gasped. Jack had never been one for crying girls – or any sort of crying, actually. Still, he couldn't exactly remember the last time that she'd been pressed this tightly against him, and his arms went around her of their own accord, pulling her closer so that he could bury his face in her hair and inhale the sweet scent of her. The last time had probably been that day in the bathroom, which felt so long ago. Too long ago. Why had they stayed apart since then? He couldn't seem to recall a reason . . .

"Lola . . ."

That girl sniffed and wiped at her eyes furiously. "She's fine, don't worry."

"Then why are you crying?"

She wiped at her shining face again. Jack longed to kiss her, to taste the saltiness of her tears on her lips, but suppressed the desire and waited for her answer instead. Her eyes were red and swollen, her skin pale, and he knew that whatever had happened had greatly upset her.

Warm breath fanned out across his neck as she breathed out, calming herself enough to speak coherently. "Nothing. Just my mom being . . . herself . . . I was supposed to be at your place an hour ago. Lola is probably waiting for me." She reached out and grabbed his hand, squeezing tightly and then bringing it up to her lips to kiss his dirty knuckles in a sudden and rapturous expression of devotion. The gesture confused and pleased him. "Come on. She'll be thrilled you're home early. It's hardly ten o'clock."

That girl glued herself to his side on the way up to his apartment, her hand gripping at his fiercely until his sore fingers felt as though they'd had the ache compressed out of them. He wasn't in that horrible of a mood today, on second thought, and his enjoyment of that girl's weight pressed against his side coupled with the abstract appreciation for the delicate features of her face was almost unsettling, but not quite. It wasn't often that he felt content enough to enjoy the sight of her, and even the ache in his fingers was dying down thanks to the alleviating pressure of her hand against his. He even ventured to allow himself a moment of blissful carelessness, imagining himself going into his apartment, taking a hot shower, sitting down on their beaten couch with Lola and her, and relaxing for the rest of the night, just like they used to do. Before things had become so chaotic and dark. Back when the tears coating her eyelashes had been from her over-abundance of laughter and not from frustrated tears.

But Jack had forgotten that things weren't like old times, couldn't be like old times. You couldn't recreate the past. Especially not when your present was a layabout asshole who insisted on forcing himself into your life.

Bill Whitting sat in his regular place on the couch with a beer clenched in his hammy fist, just like the first time Jack had ever met him. He was usually passed out in his mother's bed by the time Jack got home, so generally Jack could ignore his existence. But Jack was home early tonight, and he could tell immediately that it was a good thing he was.

Lola sat on the couch at the opposite end, her posture rigid and her skin unnaturally pale, even for her. Jack could see her chest rising and falling rapidly from where he stood at the door with that girl. Resting in between Lola's thin right thigh and Bill's meaty left one was Bill's free hand, tapping conspicuously against the faded and mangy cushion. The air felt heavy inside of the apartment –indisputably _wrong._ One look at Lola's stricken expression and the way her darting, guilty eyes flickered from Bill's hand to Jack's face and Jack knew that Bill Whitting had tried to touch what wasn't his – what wasn't _anybody's –_ to touch.

Without thinking, a numbness diffusing throughout his limbs and mind, Jack bent down and reached just inside of his sock, pulling out the folded knife he kept jammed inside of it. He was already striding forward towards the couch by the time he flicked it open in his hand, and he heard that girl shout his name from behind him but it was foggy and unclear, and it didn't seem to reach that place of ultimate consideration inside of him. Lola tumbled off of the couch and crawled across the floor towards that girl just as Jack grabbed the man by the front of his shirt and pressed the knife to his paunchy throat, slicing into skin on contact.

The open beer can slipped from the man's grappling fingers, and his hands came up and around to try and push Jack away from him as he gasped in fear and pain, but Jack would not be moved. He pushed the thick arms away as if Lola was the one reaching for him, like they were no more than frail twigs, and pressed harder against his knife. It sliced through another layer of skin and Jack felt his limbs tingle in happiness – this was something he knew how to do. Slicing open pigs was _so _easy . . . .

"Jack, stop it!" His hand paused in its slow horizontal drag, that girl's high and petrified voice breaking through the fog in his mind like the beam from a lighthouse during a thickly overcast night. He could hear Lola sobbing, repeating "I'm sorry, I'm sorry" over and over again. His breathing was harsh and ragged, a sort of panting that spoke more of raw excitement than the anger that had taken over his body. There was a deep sense of disappointment settling over him, because he didn't want to come to his senses, didn't want to hear reason – he wanted to kill the disgusting man who writhed beneath of him, spill his blood and purge the world of such a waste of bones and skin and mind.

"Did he touch you?" Jack rasped into Bill's face, though it was not him who he was speaking to. Bill tried to croak out an answer but Jack cut him off, pressing the blade harder against his neck and cutting off the lie before it left his lips. His words broke off with a strangled cry.

Lola coughed and spluttered at that girl's feet. "N-No! He w-was – going – to – b-but – you c-came – in!"

The knife cut deeper and Jack felt hot, sticky blood flow over and between his fingers. It wasn't nearly enough to slit his throat fully, properly, and Jack so longed to do it right . . . but that girl was standing just behind him, and her hands were tugging him backwards with strength that was uncommon for someone of her size, one arm wrapped around his neck as she pulled him away from Bill, who was still bleeding and gasping on the couch.

They slumped to the floor with a muffled crash, Jack still gripping the bloody knife in his hand and shaking with anger. The thought of thick, meaty fingers creeping towards his sister's legs polluted his mind, made his body convulse with a sort of anger that was entirely new, a mix of the anger he felt at men lusting after his girl, the revulsion he held towards the dregs of society he came into contact with so often in the Narrows, and the almost consuming hatred that he'd always saved to be directed towards the violent brute that had been his father.

"If you touch her I swear, I swear I'll kill you." The words were gravelly and acidic against his tongue, like toxic sandpaper. Bill had his hand pressed against his bloody throat, mumbling croaky swear words and threats against Jack underneath of his breath. "Do you hear me? I'll slit your fucking throat!"

Lola choked from somewhere beside him, and that girl was holding him so tightly he could hardly move.

"You'd better get out of here before she lets me go."

Bill stumbled to his feet and shot a glare of loathing and fear back at Jack before staggering to the door and disappearing into the hallway. That girl held him tight for a very long time after the door had closed behind Bill, until his limbs stopped trembling and his breath came evenly.

"Jesus . . . Jesus Christ, Jack . . ."

Jack shoved her off of him, her limbs as shaky as his. He was firm and steady when he stood, but Lola and that girl were both cowering on the floor, Lola with a nose bleed and that girl looking as though she'd seen a monster.

Jack said nothing to her breathless whispers; he only wiped the bloody knife in his hand on the inside of his shirt, folded it back up, and then reinserted it into his sock.

"God . . . I thought you were going to kill him."

Jack met her gaze steadily, no trace of remorse or regret in his eyes for what he had just done. He wondered if she could sense the disappointment he felt at not being able to finish the job. It hung on him heavily, and there was a large part of him that wished he could run out into the streets in pursuit of Bill Whitting, track him down like the animal he was and then slaughter him like one, too.

"I was going to. I will, if he ever even _looks_ at Lola again. That fucking _disgusting _bastard –"

"Don't!" Lola gasped, pressing one palm against the sharp points of her collarbone. There was a bruise forming already, blooming blue and purple and yellow – she must have fallen into something as she scrambled off of the couch, away from him and his knife. The bruises were always quick to form on her tender skin, just as she was always quick to bleed. "Don't – swear."

"_What_?" Jack snapped, his breathing harsh.

"I hate – when ya – swear . . ." Lola struggled to get her words out, and that girl crawled across the floor to wrap her arms around the younger girl's shaking body. "Ya – sound – like . . . . _dad_. I hate – it. _Hate_ – it. Don't swear, Jack."

Jack hated the way she gasped and spluttered and the way she was always so weak, so weak that he always had to watch himself and everyone else when they were around her, but he didn't say that.

"Fine. Fine! I'll be a little saint from now on, huh Lola? I'll never swear again for as long as I live." Jack shook his head in disgust and then turned to look at that girl, who was still crumpled up on the ground next to Lola, stroking her hands over pale skin. He looked away immediately, banishing the desperate thought of '_I wish she would touch me like that'_ from his mind. It wasn't the time, and it was stupid besides. But he couldn't very well stop himself from thinking those things at times like these, when the blood was pumping hot and vicious through his veins and he felt so invigorated. Invigorated? Was that the way he was supposed to feel after something like this? He was so angry, felt so _violent_, and yet at the same time he felt almost . . . almost _good_. So alive and so . . . powerful. In control.

He rubbed one hand across his upper lip and then looked at that girl again. She was still staring up at him with a mixture of horror and pain in her eyes, which he didn't understand. What he had just done had been entirely necessary; proper, even. It was his duty as an older brother, an older brother to a sick sister, to handle perverts like that. He hadn't killed him, and that was the main point. She would be justified to look at him like that if he had killed him, but he hadn't. He'd wanted to, but he'd let her reason creep into his unwilling and stubborn mind. She should be thanking him for his restraint.

Somehow he didn't think she'd feel the same way, if he tried to explain that to her.

"You need to make sure that you're over here from now on." Jack ordered. "If he comes back. . . . I don't want him and Lola here alone. And Lola, you go over to her place as much as you can. Don't hang around here alone with him, ever. Understand me?"

The two of them nodded slowly, and that girl stood, hauling Lola up with her, the blood from her nosebleed smeared across his sister's cheeks. They disappeared into the bathroom to wash her up and probably cry together, knowing girls. Maybe they'd discuss him and how he was becoming so cold and uncaring, willing to take a human life without much thought about it.

He felt isolated from them, separate. As if he was the only who really understood, who could really see. Like he was the only sane one left in this place.

* * *

His mother was furious.

She had always been the type of woman who lived and breathed for the men in her life. The type who needed, physically and emotionally, a man to take care of her and love her at all times. It was a persistent and driving fear of being alone that kept her searching for men and snatching at the first ones who looked as though they might very well worship her for a little while. His father had been the first one to fill that greedy and selfish need inside of her – they'd met in high school and they'd gotten married as soon as they turned eighteen. Jack had come a little less than a year later, and at that time things had still been all right between the two of them. His dad had a job and he was only drinking as a recreational involvement, and most of all he was still in love with his mom. Jack knew that was true because he remembered, vaguely, times when his dad would come home and sweep his mother off of her feet and twirl her around. They'd laugh and kiss and Jack would pretend to be disgusted but he'd really peek at them from between his fingers and watch them as they smiled at each other, and he'd hope that he might be that happy with somebody some day.

Of course, that childish belief hadn't lasted long. The place Jack's dad had worked at – he couldn't remember exactly _what_ his dad had done – had started to go bankrupt, and his dad had lost his job. He might have found another one, but it was then, out of depression and a newfound inferiority complex, that he started drinking. And his mother was so in love, so compliant, that she let him wallow, let him drown in the bottom of his bottles. The love disappeared as quickly as the money did, and Jack still believed that it was because Jack's father was bitter that his wife had let him spiral into the worthless lump that he'd become without saying a thing about it. You can't love a woman who sits back and plays the part of brainless twit but still expects you to worship her on bended knee like you did during the honeymoon.

His mother lived and breathed for the men in her life but she didn't much care for her children. She liked them enough. Took care of them and taught them when it was needed. But her interest was minimal, there only in relation to the part of her husband that they represented. Jack was her favorite, back when she had a favorite at all, because he was the boy and he looked just like his father. But over time even that faded, and they both, Lola and he, became nuisances to her. Especially now. She really found having children to be interfering now, when all she wanted to do was run away with her new "prince charming" and start over, a fresh newlywed again, with a man devoted to her, body and soul. No sick daughter to worry about or to suck up all of her hard-earned money; no violent, cheeky son to remind her of the man she'd lost forever.

As soon as their father had died, Lola and Jack had become nothing but yesterday's news to her. Now, it was all about Bill Whitting and the sort of love he could supply her. Any word against Bill Whitting was a word against her.

"Ya just don't want anybody ta be happy," his mother accused him. She'd stormed into the apartment and cornered him in the middle of making out with that girl, who was currently sitting on the couch, looking agonizingly ill at ease. Jack looked over his mother's shoulder at her. She was biting her lip and drumming her fingers on her knee in an expression of absurd discomfort, but Jack liked that she was there to witness this. "That's it, isn't it Jack? Yah always been a miserable person, and ya want everyone ta be as miserable as you are."

His mother was livelier than he could remember seeing her in years, her hair tousled and her dark eyes shining with emotion. She liked that she was putting him down in front of his girlfriend; she liked that he'd interrupted their time together. Jack found her absolutely detestable at this moment. It occurred to him that it'd be so easy to reach out and slap her, hard, right across her face. Knock that newfound determination out of her. It was too late for her to summon it up, and for the wrong cause. It was all wrong, what she was doing, and it made him furious.

"You know what makes me miserable?" To his infinite pleasure his mother took a step backwards. Almost like a reflex, from all the times his father's voice had barked out at her just before his fist went swinging "Having a mother like _you_. Did you, uh, _miss_ the point that I'm trying to make? That your _sweetheart_ was letting that meaty fist of his creep in between your sick daughter's legs? Hmm? I suppose that something like that just doesn't _matter_ . . . so long as you can keep a man by your side."

She let out a splutter of indignation, and Jack's fingers were tingling in a desire to curl up into a fist and pummel her face until she screamed out that she was a horrid mother, and that she only looked out for her interests and her interests alone.

"Ya haven't liked Bill from tha moment ya found out about him! You're just making up lies so that I'll kick 'im out, that's all, that's what yah tryin' ta do."

His laugh was scathing. "Oh no, no, no. I don't _need_ you to kick him out. I can guarantee that if he ever tries to step into this place again I'll saw his legs off."

That girl shifted over on the couch, resting her elbows on her knees and pressing her fingertips to her lips. His mother gave another snort of anger.

"Who d'ya think ya are, Jack? I'm your _motha_ –"

"Not a good one . . ."

"_I'm_ tha one who makes tha rules around here, not you, and not Lola. I've slaved away for _years_ for you two kids, especially for Lola, sick like she is. I _know_ Bill. Betta than you. If I didn't I wouldn't dream'ah putting my little girl in danger by having him around."

But she'd let his father beat the hell out of him night after night, until the blood had blotted out the entirety of his vision and even he believed he was going to die . . . She had said nothing then, just as she would say nothing now. He knew it.

"Sick delusions aside, I restate my former assurance – I don't care how _noble_ you think that man is. If he tries to come back here, he'll be leaving in pieces."

Their gazes leveled off, a challenge, and Jack felt another enraged, acidic bubbling of anger – she had never demonstrated such zeal on a topic before. Never stood up for anything like she was now, and for a man who meant _nothing_ . . .

"Ya can't act like this. Who d'ya think ya are that you can talk to me like this? After what ya did to Bill? I'll call tha police on ya, Jack. For assault. They'll throw ya in jail. Maybe you'll learn how ta respect your superiors while you're in there."

The threat was tangible, but all Jack could do was laugh. Years and years of abuse at the hands of a drunken savage and now, _now_, when her daughter's safety was in jeopardy and the prospect of being alone again was looming in the distance, _now_ she screamed assault. On the wrong person. She was always so wrong, in everything she did.

"You're _pathetic_!" Jack laughed shrilly, clutching at his sides as his body heaved with the force of his laughter and incredulity. "Assault . . . You kill me!"

"I mean it!" his mother shouted, her voice cracking. She strode over to the door and swung it open, stepping out into the hall and pulling the pay phone that stood just outside off the hook. That girl stood up and cast him an apprehensive look as his mother dug around in her pockets for change. Jack continued to chuckle even after the violent laughs had subsided. "I'm callin' the cops right now if ya don't leave!"

Jack laughed again and then turned to that girl, who spoke up immediately, "My mom won't have you . . . she won't let you over. She's on a tirade against us right now, because I won't turn tricks for her."

He cast his mind out for places to stay and his thoughts landed on a dusty warehouse, full of comfortable looking couches and some recreational activities, even. A smile spread out across his face slowly and he replied, "Don't worry, just make sure Lola stays over your place."

"You can't just stay on the streets. Where will you go?"

But she didn't know, none of them knew, that he had already assured himself a place to stay – already carved out a place for himself separate from this pitiful excuse for an existence. He hadn't realized how that one simple step had already changed things, but now . . .

"Let's just say that I've got a very . . . close. . . business associate. She'll set me up."

With his idea solidifying into a legitimate plan inside of his head, Jack turned and shouted towards the open doorway at his mother, whose voice he heard murmuring into the receiver of a telephone. "I'm going! But I'll be back, and if he's not gone by then . . . Well, by the time I'm done with him, he won't be of any use to you as a man."

He turned back to that girl and kissed her fast and hard before striding into his room and pulling out some clothes to change into while he was at Riley's. He didn't need much besides that, except for the bit of money he had stashed away beneath a loose floorboard, his own personal Swiss vault.

That girl followed him and stood in his doorway. She seemed to hesitate for a moment, and then from the pocket of her jeans she pulled out a crumpled piece of paper that she smoothed out in her hands and looked down at with an inscrutable expression on her face.

"I was going to give you this after you two got done fighting, but . . ." She stuck out her hand and Jack took the paper from her. The curly writing scrawled across it was recognizable immediately. "It was tacked to the door when I got here."

Blue eyes burned into him as he read the note:_ J – Tonight, same time, same place. You and me, baby. You ready for it? – Riley_

Even her handwriting seemed breathless with anticipation and eagerness to begin what she'd started. His fingers clutched the note into a tightly wadded ball in his fist – Riley's fever seemed to be transmittable through notes, because Jack felt it burning just beneath his skin. It all seemed to be falling into place so perfectly already . . . Even now he had managed to secure himself a safe place, a place outside of his home that he could fall back on. And after tonight . . . . He might be able to get his own place, move Lola in, pay for it himself.

"You want to tell me what you're doing, Jack?" That girl's voice was cold and jerky with emotion, though it didn't seem like she was close to tears – more like she was close to marching forward and slapping him across the face. "And while you're at it, maybe you can tell me who this Riley girl is, and why she's referring to you as 'baby'?"

Jack blinked and then, before he could stop himself, began laughing again. The absurdity of the entire situation struck him and took him entirely off guard – kicked out by his mother and then confronted by his jealous girl. How melodramatic. Like a soap opera, almost, except the only abnormally pretty one was the girl standing in front of him now, and the only evil twin a guy had was his own reflection staring back at him in the mirror at night. Still, it was pretty amusing, if he thought about it.

"What – are you - are you _jealous_?" Jack laughed again, wiping at his watering eyes. "You know, I can't take much more of this hilarity. I really have to go."

That girl shook her head in disbelief, following him out of his room as he walked from it, clothes bundled in his arms.

"You aren't seriously just going to leave without explaining that note to me, Jack? Just tell me that this isn't the girl you're staying with tonight . . ."

Their eyes met. When he failed to answer her she blinked, lips parting in shock. He might have struck her, she looked so incredulous. It was such an inconvenience to have to explain things to her, especially when he couldn't very well explain all of it. Why was she being so obstinate, so idiotic? As if he would be fooling around behind her back with Peyton Riley, of all people, the married daughter of a mob boss. She had to be out of her mind. As if he was the type of guy to fool around with _anyone_.

"I've called tha cops!" His mother reentered the room and gloated. "You'll want to get gone, quick. They're on tha way."

Jack sighed and rolled his eyes, debating on whether it was worth it to stick around and explain something he really didn't feel like explaining – couldn't explain, really. There'd be time later to make her understand how foolish she was being, how unbearably_ predictable_ she was acting. Time enough to take her into his arms and put an end to this agonizing and purposeless _waiting_ that they'd been doing, dancing around each other all this time, and finally let her know in the best way he could think of that she was his and he was hers, and that was that, forever.

After he'd sealed this deal and secured himself a place in the mob. Once Bill was taken care of. Then he'd explain. But not now, with his mother glaring at him in unconcealed loathing and waiting for him to leave. Not now.

The last thing he saw as he turned to leave was the incredulous and wounded face of that girl, the smug form of his mother faded and inconsequential beside her.

He'd tell her eventually. He'd make things right between them. In a few days he'd make everything right again.

* * *

**A/N:** Ah, foolish Jack. Hopefully Louise won't go and do anything stupid . . . but who knows? A jealous girl is a dangerous thing.

**Crystalstars88** successfully guessed at how the Bill thing would play out, so good job! I didn't base this on 8 Mile and have actually never seen the movie at all (though I've driven on 8 Mile itself many, many times), but the concept, I guess, was the same. There'll be another "domino" falling . . . two chapters from now? . . . because of this incident. More hard times to come for Jack and Lola, I'm afraid.

And kudos to **Strawberry Flames** for pointing out the whole "Mr. J" origin thing! She was the only one who commented on it, and I was hoping someone would. : D That is exactly what I was going for.

Thanks to everyone who've reviewed thus far, and I hope new readers will consider dropping by and telling me how they liked the chapter. Every kind word (even if it is just one word) is appreciated. I've had some writer's block lately and I'm hoping that hearing my lovely readers' thoughts will work as a muse for me. : D

I think it'd be INCREDIBLY cool if we could get to 100 reviews pretty soon. I'd pretty much squee with glee.


	10. Chapter 10

Peyton Riley's blazing eyes scanned over his body, a mingled expression of disgust, approval, and anticipation kindling behind the blue.

"Take off your shirt."

Jack cocked one eyebrow at her. The breathless blonde groaned in exasperation.

"Oh _please_. If I wanted to fuck you I'd have shoved my hands down your pants by now. You need to look sharp when you meet with Johnny or he won't take you at all seriously, and no offense Jay, but right now you look like you just crawled out of a trash can." She strode forward and reached for the hem of his shirt. Jack knocked her sharply filed fingertips away.

"I can undress myself."

She threw her hands up and said, "Fine. Here, make it quick. I want to look you over."

Riley tossed him a bundle of clothing and then stood watching as he pulled his shirt over his head. Jack did not miss – could not miss – the appraisal of her eyes as he pulled on the "acceptable" clothes she'd given him. There were no sly looks or timid peeks from underneath thick eyelashes – her stares were blatant and bold and completely unapologetic. It felt to him as though she was testing him, trying to push his limits and make him squirm, make him uncomfortable, make him blush.

It didn't work. He buttoned up the shirt, hiding his naked abdomen from her avid gaze. She'd have to do a lot more than stare at him with her smoldering eyes to make him fold.

"Are you kidding?" Jack plucked at the hem of the shirt she'd given him, a black silk button-down. "I look like I'm from Jersey."

"Better than looking like you came from digging for your dinner in a dumpster outside of a restaurant that Johnny owns. I think you need a necklace."

"If you come near me with jewelry I'll strangle you with it."

Riley stopped in the midst of rifling through her shiny crocodile skin handbag and smirked up at him. He hadn't been kidding, and Jack realized that she probably knew he wasn't. Why this made her smile, he wasn't sure. If she had been that girl she would have looked up at him with that unnerving expression of disbelief and worry that made him feel like such a monster whenever he said something like that. But around Riley, those things were acceptable. Those things were, in her book, a positive sign. There were moments, split seconds it seemed, when he would wonder which girl was correct – was it his girl, who made him feel like he should be a better person and who seemed to want to shine bright lights into all of his dark, shadowy corners; or was it Riley, who seemed to think that how he was would get him everywhere in life, and that his dark corners were what made him strong?

But such self-doubt never lasted very long in Jack's mind – he had other things to worry about.

"I need to stay here for a while. After this." Jack did not phrase it as a question; as a request. He stated it definitively, as if he had already claimed ownership of the place.

Riley tilted her head to the side and stared up at him with a mocking smile tugging at the edges of her full lips. "All right. There's a comfortable little room you can have that Daddy set up a bed in. He slept here for two whole months once, when him and Mom got into a bad fight . . . So why are _you _in need of a place to stay?"

"I don't see how that's your problem," Jack snapped, avoiding the question. Telling her the truth would never be an option, no matter how closely they worked together.

The strands of her blonde hair caught the light as she stepped towards him. And Jack was suddenly acutely aware that he was, all at once and quite unexpectedly, horribly uncomfortable. He was furious at himself for it. Riley, who had sidled up to him and stood hovering with her body just millimeters away from brushing his own, had in some way gained the upper hand. Maybe it was the surprise of it all, or maybe it was the line of her neck as she tilted back her head to look at him, or maybe it was the look in her eyes that told him clearly that though no part of them was touching now, she wanted them to be. And so much more than that.

Most likely it was what she said next, purring out her words with such smoothness that Jack felt he finally knew just how velvet would feel, listening to it.

"Maybe you have no real reason. Maybe you just wanted to come here for me. Are you hoping to catch me alone some dark, steamy night, Jay?"

Riley stood in front of him, a masterpiece of a woman with her lips pouted sultrily and her body relaxed into an inviting posture, and all Jack saw was the face of that girl just as he'd left her – unearthly beautiful and hurt and _his_. No amount of genuine sex appeal in the world could measure up to her innocence.

"You have a pretty high opinion of yourself, don't you?"

His words stung her, just as he'd meant them to, and though it was a risky thing to do he didn't regret it. Whatever it was she was trying to pull – trying to break him, trying to get him to fall to his knees and let her take complete control, or just trying to get him into bed – he was having none of it. And most significantly, he didn't want her. Besides the fact that he was far too wrapped up in that girl to desire anybody else, Jack saw something inside of Riley that repulsed him, something dark and cruel and animalistic – something that he recognized and hated in himself.

It didn't matter how beautiful she was, because the darkness obscured it all.

That wild savageness flashed across Riley's features. But just as quickly as Jack saw it, it was gone, replaced by the smooth, carefully controlled expression of a woman who was far too used to men spurning her.

"Come on. Johnny hates it when anybody is late." She cast him one last, blank stare and then turned, her only comfort in the knowledge that Jack had no choice but to follow her.

They drove through the narrow streets in a small but shiny black BMW, something that didn't look new but was in near perfect condition nonetheless. Willie drove, silent and watchful, and Riley and Jack sat at opposite ends of the backseat. Jack tapped his fingers restlessly on the interior of the door and against the cool glass of the window – Riley said nothing, and for some reason this annoyed Jack. It brought to mind how much he wished it was that girl sitting next to him. He could think of a thousand things he could be doing with that girl in the backseat of a car like this, with the soft smell of leather and faded cigar smoke lingering in the air.

He'd always had a sort of understated attraction to cars – he figured it must be because he so rarely rode in one. In fact, Jack couldn't quite remember the last time he'd been in a car. It must have been years and years ago, when his mother had rented a car – a beat up old Chevy – to drive Lola and him out to a hospital in hopes that they could help his sister. The treatment there had cost too much and the staff had been unwilling to help since they didn't have insurance or health care, but the ride itself had been worth the wasted time. He remembered that on the way back, when his mother had sped through the streets in a flurry of agitation because of the bad news she'd received, he had wanted to roll down the window and hang out of it like he saw dogs do sometimes, the wind whipping hard against his face. Jack couldn't think of a better physical demonstration of the feeling of freedom.

There wasn't any desire inside of him to do that, now. Riley's sulking presence sucked all of the elation out of him and infused him with anxiousness instead. The desire to do a tuck-and-roll right out of the moving vehicle was very strong. He longed for the quiet, solitary walk he was so used to taking. Riding in an expensive car with a woman you'd just insulted in more than one way left him wishing for aching knees and blisters on his ankles, instead.

After several more minutes of silence, she finally spoke.

"It should be just Johnny and a couple of others – Sabatinos, mostly. None of the thugs – they're not important enough to have any sort of say in who gets in. You're not going in with me. We're dropping you off a couple streets over. You wait thirty minutes and then come in, got it? He can't think that I brought you, or that you're conspiring with me . . . he'll shoot us both dead on the spot."

Riley examined the tip of one shiny heel.

"So who exactly, uh, _suggested_ this little get together? If it wasn't you or big black up there."

Willie grunted and his thick fingers tightened on the steering wheel. The day must be a bad one – Jack couldn't seem to stop insulting the people around him, the ones whom it was imperative for him to work with. But that was no surprise – he was great at ruining things.

"If you must know, we have a sort of . . . spy, I guess you could say. Johnny thinks they're real chummy. He suggested you, which endears you to Johnny right off the bat. But you're going to have to show that you can bring something to the table." Riley sniffed in his direction, rather imperiously, and continued, "If you have anything at all to offer. I'm starting to wonder."

Her coldness had broken, split down the center, and Jack had gotten a glimpse of the boiling anger and injured pride that teemed just beneath her cleverly constructed surface. It sealed over quickly, but he wasn't about to let it end like that. They still had another five minutes in that car together, at least, and he knew that without any sort of entertainment each minute would feel like a century. And there was, of course, the problem of his nerves, which he needed to find an outlet for. What better way than taunting her? Regaining the upper hand that he had lost so unexpectedly back at that warehouse?

"Don't sound so bitter, Peyton." Her head tilted infinitesimally at the mention of her name, and Jack grinned. "I think it's good for you to experience wanting something that you can't have. I'm teaching you a lesson. Maybe it'll, uh, build _character_."

The laugh that followed his sentence was short and sharp, and it made Willie's knuckles lighten as he gripped the steering wheel tighter. From the corner of his eye Jack saw Riley's jaw stiffen; saw her fingers clutch spasmodically at her purse. When she turned to face him the raw underbelly of her emotions was exposed and that was the way he liked it, the way he liked her – no façades; no pretending. Just her, every last unscrupulous, cynical, greedy bit of her. He could relate to that side of her; he could deal with that easily, almost too easily.

"And _why_ can't I have you?" Her face was shadowy and unclear, but Jack knew that if he could see her eyes properly he might be able to point out each and every one of the seven deadly sins, stamped clearly across her retinas. "Who are you? What do you need all this money for? Why don't you tell us your name, or where you live, or –"

"You managed to find out where I lived pretty well, yourself," Jack interrupted sharply. "Sent Willie after me in the dark one night, huh? Followed me home? Left that little note to advertise who had the upper hand? Why doesn't he tell you all about the other things he saw while he was tracking me?"

Jack reached forward and slapped Willie on one broad shoulder. "Come on, Willie, secrets don't make friends. Let's hear all about my . . . . mysterious life. You find out my name?"

Willie said nothing.

"Nah, I don't think you did. Because if you had, you'd have told Peyton and she'd be sure to fling it out during some verbal battle between the two of us, just so she could throw me off my game. Right, doll?"

Jack threw himself back into the seat he had been leaning out of in order to antagonize Willie, positioning himself so close to Riley that strands of her golden curls rested on his shoulder. The nearness of their bodies visibly infuriated her, and to Jack it felt like an appropriate sort of revenge for her earlier actions.

"What's wrong, _shy_?" One arm snaked around her shoulders and pulled her closer, so close that their faces were nearly brushing and he could smell the expensive and musky scent of some overrated French perfume that all those upper-class women thought they were obligated to bathe in. If they had any idea how much more alluring a few sprays of the understated scent of violets was . . . "You didn't seem to mind getting close back at the warehouse. Change of heart?"

With deliberate care, Jack spun one strand of golden hair around his finger, the other four digits brushing against the nape of her neck. The thrill that shot through his limbs when, in response to his touch, she shivered, sent blood rushing through his veins. He knew all at once that he'd found something, discovered a feeling, that he had been unaware of until this moment. This wasn't the feeling he got when he drug his hands over the skin of that girl and felt her tremble helplessly against him, because in those situations he was even more helpless than she was, just hoping that it didn't show.

This was different – this was realizing that he could completely overpower a woman. Knowing that he could have her at his mercy, make her beg, and be in control all the while because he felt nothing for her – not love, not desire. This was him and him alone, powerful, and that thought alone was enough to be arousing.

Whether she noticed the shift of control in the atmosphere or just had enough of his proximity, Jack wasn't sure, but the next second she had snapped her fingers and Willie had stopped the car.

"Get out," she ordered coldly, shrugging off his hand from her shoulder and straightening the folds of her blouse with fingers that were somewhat less than unwavering.

Jack laughed, his mind swimming with the remnants of the euphoria that had just rushed through his veins. "Come on, sweetheart . . . you aren't afraid of doing something you might . . . . _regret _. . . are you?"

"No," Riley snapped. "This is just where you need to leave. Walk straight until you hit the liquor store, turn right, walk straight until you come to a warehouse. That's Johnny's place. It'll take you thirty minutes or so. Now get the hell out."

He was still laughing as the door swung shut behind him and Willie pressed the accelerator, wheels squealing and the slumped form of a blonde woman visible through the tinted back windows.

* * *

Johnny Sabatino's demeanor was severely standoffish. Haughty and sneering, he sat with his posture relaxed and his fingertips pressed together, making a steeple out of his hands. His black hair was coiled in tight black curls and shining in the dull light, and when Johnny spoke it was with an exaggerated Italian accent, thicker than it would be had it been totally authentic – Jack discerned immediately that Sabatino used the accent to separate himself, in Johnny's eyes _elevate_ himself, from the people he was surrounded by. Jack was immediately disgusted by him, more so when he saw Peyton Riley sitting demurely beside him, her hands folded in her lap and her eyes staring off unconcernedly into the distance. The fire that was usually kindling behind them was burning low, subdued beside the man who she wished to unleash its whole fury on the most.

But the worst of it was that Riley had dressed him up to be Sabatino's clone. His shirt – that silk monstrosity that Riley had forced him to wear – couldn't be more than two shades of grey different than the one Johnny had on underneath of his suede jacket. It would have been better if he could go bare chested. The only thing that lessened Jack's feeling of revulsion was the knowledge that Johnny was wearing a thin silver chain around his neck – jewelry.

All at once Jack knew that this, all of it, any of it, would be a piece of cake. Because how hard could pulling one over on a guy who wears _jewelry_ be, anyway?

"Take a seat . . ."

There was a pause as Johnny gestured to a seat sitting opposite to him – it was rickety and the cushion was badly stained with unidentifiable substances, a stark contrast to all the other chairs around the warehouse, most particularly Johnny's, which looked like they were made out of expensive leather. Jack suppressed his smirk at this move – a simple, elementary mind trick. Sabatino wanted Jack to feel inferior right from the start.

But Johnny didn't seem to grasp the concept that it wasn't the chair the man sat in that indicated his worth. It was all about the posture.

Jack sat, and Johnny stared down at the set of playing cards that were spread out in front of him. From where he was positioned Jack surmised that Johnny was entertaining himself with a game of Solitaire.

Olive fingers flipped a card over and a sneer tugged at Johnny's lips. He held up the card face out for Jack to see. It was mostly white with a single uncomplicated figure dead center dressed in lurid red and yellow. Two identical words were stamped down each side: **JOKER.**

"A useless card, eh? I tell my boys to leave it out but somehow . . . they always forget." Johnny whipped the card out and Jack followed its progress as it spiraled through the air. It landed at the feet of Peyton Riley. "And you see? It's completely ruined my little game. Worthless."

"I guess that all depends on the, uh . . ._ game_ you play," Jack replied, feeling antsy. He hadn't walked a mile through the dark Gotham back streets to sit around and discuss card games.

Johnny Sabatino smiled slightly. "True, true . . ."

The man licked his lips and let silence fall between the three of them. Riley's eyes, perplexed and visibly uncertain, shifted to the unmoving form of her husband beside her to Jack, who sat relaxed and waiting for the chips to fall where they may.

"What game are _you_ playin', Jay?" From the inside of his jacket Johnny pulled out a silver revolver. It rested in his hand like an extension of his fingers, the way smokers hold their cigarettes or alcoholics hold their drink bottles.

"Uh . . . _pre-_ferably not Russian Roulette." Jack sat back in his wobbly old seat and let his fingers drum on the armrests. "I hear that one can end a little . . . unfortunately."

Sabatino laughed wryly and set the gun down in front of him, resuming his former posture, with the tips of his fingers pressed together. This time he pressed his hands to his lips and stared at Jack's slumped and casual form with a piercing gaze. Jack knew enough of those to recognize that on anybody else that gaze would have been chilling.

"You're a sharp one. Yeah, I see that. What do you want from me?"

Jack clicked his tongue against the side of his cheek and then responded, "Employment."

"Why?"

Another click, and Jack decided that those eyes were asking for the truth, and the best he could do was hope that it wasn't followed up with a bullet.

"The money."

Johnny sat back in his chair, one hand curled up against his jaw and the other outstretched and resting near his gun.

"We got some 'problems'," Johnny's relentlessly hellish eyes smoldered in the direction of his wife as he spat out his next words, "with _loyalty_ 'round here. You wanna know what I did just before you got here, Jay?"

Jack narrowed his eyes and replied hesitantly. "Yes . . ."

"I used three rounds on one of my boys. Me 'n him were real tight. Like two peas in a pod." Johnny's fingers stroked a trail down the barrel of the gun in front of him. "Can't trust nobody these days, you know? Thought he was one of the good ones . . . one of the loyal ones . . . and then I find out he's been workin' with this . . . this stupid bitch . . . sittin' on my left."

Jack raised his eyebrows in an expression of shocked but abject interest, even as Peyton Riley tensed and inhaled sharply through her nose. This information came as a surprise to her. This meeting was nothing more than an ambush.

"He was the one who said I oughta meet with you, Jay. Ain't that a funny coincidence?"

All at once Jack thought of Lola, and that girl, and somewhere deep inside the prospect of dying loomed dark and terrifying in front of him – not, surprisingly, because he was afraid of what came after, but because he was afraid of what he wouldn't have accomplished before he left everything behind.

"I wouldn't say it's funny . . . but then again, I've never had much of a sense of humor."

The composure in his own voice shocked him, but he was grateful for it. Johnny picked up the gun and, once again, cradled it in his hand. Would the shot be fast, unexpected? Or would he let it drag out, taunt him, torture him even, before he finally did the deed? Could there be a chance of escape? If he could intimate to Riley that they work together to make a break for it –

"You know why I brought my wedded wife in here tonight?" Johnny interrupted Jack's frenzied line of thought. He paused and glanced over at Riley with the deepest expression of contempt Jack had ever seen on the face of a man. "I wanted to test you out before I considered letting you in."

Johnny placed the gun down onto the table in front of him and then, in a move quite unexpected by Jack, pushed it across the table to him. Jack reached out and stopped it with his own hand.

"I know you said already that you don't wanna play Russian Roulette, Jay, but the first rule of _my_ game is that sometimes you gotta do things you don't wanna do."

Jack looked up at Sabatino, uncomprehending but wary nonetheless. Did he expect him to put the gun to his own head and pull the trigger?

"I used three rounds on that traitor . . . three rounds left. Random order. Aim it at my girl here and take your shot. Let's see if today's her lucky day."

So it was Riley, not him. At least, not yet. He knew instantly that he couldn't falter, because this was the test Johnny had spoke of – if he waited an instant he would die. And after all, Peyton Riley meant nothing to him. Not more, certainly, than seeing his sister again. Not more than seeing that girl again. No, never more than that.

He'd never shot a gun but it didn't take a genius to know how to do it, and Jack had seen them used enough to figure it out. Without thinking, the cold detachment he had felt at the sight of his father's dead body spreading throughout his limbs once more and separating his mind from his conscience completely, he raised the heavy sleekness of the cold gun up and aimed it directly at Riley, who sat upright and dignified in her chair. Her hard, expressive eyes would not beg or plead with him, not even then, and Jack thought briefly that if things turned out badly it might be a genuine shame that such a woman would be wiped off of the map.

An instant had passed by the time his finger pulled the trigger, and he did not close his eyes as he did it. If this was his first murder, he figured he ought to see it.

Nothing. The gun emitted one loud click as the cylinder rotated past an empty round.

Jack lowered the gun and set it on the table, numbness still hanging on his limbs as his eyes met Sabatino's and the Italian man searched for some emotion that he could tie back to sympathy or feeling for his wife. He found nothing, which was unsurprising to Jack – nobody but that girl found anything worthwhile in his eyes. Had he been sitting across from _her_ with his life on the line and his lies up for examination, he would have considered himself dead already. But that girl was, mercifully, home in her own bed. Safe. Peaceful. The way he liked her. The reason he was doing all of this.

"Well, well, sugar. I guess you live to see another day."

Jack pushed the gun back across to Sabatino, who picked it up and hid it inside of his jacket, oblivious to the look of disgust that passed across Riley's face.

"And you, Jay, managed to pass my little test." Sabatino looked met his eyes again, orbs as black and unyielding as hunks of coal. "See, you probably think I'm cold. But you gotta keep order . . . . without order, everything falls apart. And then ain't nobody wins."

Winning wasn't exactly what Jack was after. The most he wanted was fairness; even a sliver of it would be sufficient for him, he thought. Maybe if things were a little fairer he wouldn't be sitting across from a trigger-happy, egotistical mobster who, by some slip of fate, had fallen into a position of power that he did not deserve. The order of things now wasn't fair, but if things went according to plan . . . well, maybe Jack could rectify that.

"I like you. I like the way you didn't hesitate when I told you to do something. My other boys would have whined a bit. Asked me why. If they really had to do it." Johnny leaned forward and smiled an oily smile, and it was then that Jack knew that he had broken past that surface – the same cold surface that his wife used against Jack so often – and reached the real Johnny Sabatino teeming just underneath, all fake charm and slimy charisma. It was then that Jack knew he was in. Somehow the triumph felt hollow to him. "They don't seem to understand that they gotta do _everything_ I say. 'Cause I'm the boss."

If that girl had been sitting across from Jack and staring at him like Johnny Sabatino was, she would have read the unspoken response in his eyes as clear as day:

_Not for long._

"Welcome to the fold, Jay."

* * *

**A/N:** SO. Johnny Sabatino, eh? What'd you think?

A huge thanks to: **crystalstars88, theatre-gypsy, Cullenista1, peacefulgrace, Misplaced Levity, V Evey, Ignatius J Reilly, Simplelover15, Jack's girl, xXSarcasmIsMyWeaponxX, Janice, NicoleDesFetes, liVe-yOur-fAntasY, RedWatch, Isabeau de Foix, Strawberry Flames, I. Am. Doll. Parts., mandya1313 **and my new reviewers **truelove221, jananesane, Lavender Rain, Black-Sakura-44, Jezebel, Ellie-Ohhh **and **psychadelicious** for being THE MOST FANTASTIC READERS IN THE WHOLE WORLD, and leaving a review. I heartily thank you all. And those of you who haven't reviewed - please do! Regardless, though, I love all my readers/people who favorite and/or add my story to their story alert.

**Two** questions: I'm not very familiar with this site's etiquette – is it common practice to respond to the reviews you get? If so I'll definitely start. I used a different site that responded directly under the review instead of through the inbox, and I responded to every one I received, but I wasn't sure if people did that here.

Another: When writing stories I often search Google images to find actors/actresses or other people who remind me of the characters I'm writing. Works as a way to better visualize them in my mind. Anybody want me to include the link for who I see as Johnny Sabatino & Peyton Riley?

Jeez, I ramble too much! Sorry!


	11. Chapter 11

One whole week passed.

Jack's old life seemed to fade into the background. He couldn't go home, not just yet. His mother was bound to still be on the warpath with him, and he couldn't really afford getting thrown in jail. Cuffed, fingerprinted, and roughed up in a smelly cell by a guy called Charlie . . . it wasn't his ideal Thursday night.

He didn't go to school, either. It seemed to be something others did, a trivial past time that those without a higher purpose and no conception of how to break away from the system wasted their time on. Jack was separate from that. He had a taste of how freeing it felt to be virtually on his own – and he did feel like that, despite the fact that he was considered no more than a common flunky by a petulant mob boss mere years older than himself – and he couldn't even entertain the idea of going back to the mindless, institutionalized droning of uncaring teachers on subjects that could get him just about nowhere. The shabby little shack of a high school the Narrows provided could not do any more for him – if Jack wished to expand his store of knowledge, he would do it himself, by his own means. And the things he studied would be a lot more interesting than the Underground Railroad and pointless logarithms.

Jack felt as if he'd tossed a huge 'Fuck You' towards The Man. And it felt good.

There was only one thing to spoil his elation.

Every night he'd slept at the old Riley warehouse in a guest bedroom larger than the living area in his own apartment, and in a bed that he could stretch his entire body out on, length- and width-wise. The place was ritzier than anything Jack had ever been at before, and yet he still could not appreciate it. And it wasn't because Peyton Riley's attitude towards him was as cold as the nights were getting for actually firing that gun at her, or because he was forced to walk two miles in the bleak darkness before Willie would arrive to pick him up every night he left from Sabatino's place. Jack was unsettled because it had been one whole week since he'd seen that girl, and he realized that it was the longest he'd ever gone without hearing her voice since the moment he'd met her. He was forced to admit, in the late hours as he tossed and turned in a bed that should have coaxed him straight to sleep, that he missed that girl. Missed his sister, too. But mostly, most poignantly, he missed that girl.

It was clearer than ever to him that comfort, money, and safety meant nothing unless Lola and that girl were there to share it with him. He didn't think he'd ever really felt it as strongly as he did on those nights when he ate alone, the silence pressing in on his ears until he found himself drumming restlessly on the table just to break it. Jack had never been one for wanting company before, and it wasn't any company he wanted. There was really no company he would ever desire other than that of his sister or that girl, for the rest of his life. That he was sure of.

But it wasn't as if he wasn't busy. He hadn't been to school in a week for nothing – Johnny Sabatino, as well as all the thugs he had become acquainted with over the past week, figured he was nineteen going on twenty, and therefore free to do whatever Johnny or his upper level men demanded of him at whatever time they demanded it. They used him as an errand boy, fetching them food, or ammo, or calling up their favorite whores and making appointments with them. Still, he wasn't complaining. School had never interested him, anyway, and he figured trading it in for something worthwhile was a good a deal as any.

The fact that he had only just turned seventeen in an empty warehouse, without celebration or acknowledgment, was hidden, and he wanted it to stay that way.

Work had gone in the same direction as his education, and after the first two days missed Jack reconciled himself to the fact that he was officially fired. Not that this was any huge loss, either. Especially after the compensation Johnny Sabatino had already given him.

It had been the very next morning after his first meeting, at ten o'clock, the exact time when Johnny had told him to come the night before. Sabatino hadn't been alone that time. There'd been at least ten thugs milling around, two of them who looked very much like cousins to Sabatino. Nobody had introduced themself, and all of them had stared at Jack with unconcealed scorn as he approached a large black crate Johnny had set up in the place of his Solitaire game from the night before.

"Guess what's inside."

Jack had really not felt like guessing, but Johnny had shifted his weight and his jacket had fallen back to reveal the same revolver from the night before, shoved into a hidden inner pocket. He had decided he would get nowhere if he didn't cooperate. What was that saying? Something about catching more maggots with honey than . . . salt? . . . No, that wasn't right.

"Let's see. . . ." Jack had mused idly, tapping one finger against his chin. "Is it bigger than a bread box?"

Johnny had laughed and slapped Jack on the shoulder, leaving his hand to rest there. It'd been difficult, very difficult, for Jack to conceal the revulsion he'd felt at the other man's touch.

"Some of 'em. But even the littlest ones are a million times more powerful." Johnny had reached out and flung the lid from the box, revealing a vast assortment of shiny black guns.

"Unless you happened to have a bread box that doubled as a bazooka . . ." Jack had murmured, eyes resting on one piece in particular – a gun with a bulkier design than Johnny's revolver, but streamlined and jet black, with a chrome slide. The desire to reach out and run his fingers along the weapon had risen up inside of him suddenly and unexpectedly.

"These," Johnny had declared proudly, "are top of the line machinery, Jay. And one of them is yours."

Jack had absorbed this information and let out a small 'Hmm'.

"You like 'em, right? Good taste." Johnny had shot a look at some of the men milling around, lifting up boxes and stacking them near one large garage door to be loaded into a truck. "Some of my boys, see, don't appreciate fine artistry like this. They like to play around with toys. They go to the back street markets and buy themselves little piece-of-shit hunks of metal and then act _surprised_ when they don't go off when they want them to."

Johnny had followed Jack's gaze to the sleek black gun and had lifted it up carefully, examining it with a slight smile.

"Glock 17. You might wanna get a few rounds in as practice with this one. It's kinda temperamental. Here." Johnny had passed Jack the revolver and then shoved a box full of bullets at him. Jack had let the weight of the gun settle in his hand, acclimating himself to the feel of it, the texture, as quickly as possible. He knew he would have to find a place out of the way, maybe even sneak into a shooting range somewhere and practice firing as Johnny said. It was imperative that he get as used to the gun in his hand as Johnny was used to the his own gun. As dramatic as it sounded, Jack knew that his life depended on it.

"I had no idea that you were so . . . generous," Jack had remarked, mainly sarcastically. A small part of him really hadn't realized that Sabatino would be giving him a brand new gun for free, and yet another part of him was mistrustful of his motive.

Sabatino had sniffed noisily and then replied, "I need my boys at their best. Can't run a business with sub-par machinery, know what I'm sayin'?"

But guns weren't the only thing Johnny Sabatino gave to his 'boys', apparently. After Jack had shoved the gun out of sight inside of his own jacket, Johnny had pulled out a small cellular phone and slid this across the table to Jack.

"And the last thing I'm gonna be givin' you. . . . That ain't for late night calls to 1-800 numbers, and don't forget it. The only numbers that should be lighting up that screen are mine and my boys, calling you in when you're needed." Johnny licked his lips and combed dark fingers through tightly coiled curls. "You don't answer when I call and you'll answer for it later, clear?"

"Crystal," Jack had responded, the tone of condescension in his voice unnoticed by Sabatino, who gave him another hearty smack on the shoulder and then turned his back to him, his attention diverted as one of his men dropped a large crate. Italian obscenities had rung throughout the warehouse, and though it had seemed as though Jack was unconcerned and merely examining his new cell phone, he'd been watching the men and taking notes all the while.

So far, Jack knew that Sabatino was one of the worst types of criminals – he was arrogant, dim-witted, and stubborn beyond measure. He treated the people who worked for him with unconcealed scorn and made it clear to them as often as possible who it was who was in charge, though nobody could quite grasp why that was. Seeing as though Johnny possessed neither intelligence nor the ability to conduct business flawlessly, many of the men were fast becoming discontented and trickles of doubt were already making their way slowly through the ranks. The only men who were completely loyal to Sabatino were the members of his family, and most of the other thugs voiced that this was only because they still loved the elder Johnny Sabatino without measure.

There were a good twenty members of the extended Sabatino family, most of them cousins or husbands of cousins or nieces. From what Jack had seen of them, he assumed that Johnny trusted one of them over all others – a tall, thin Italian man with a gruesome scar running jaggedly down his temple. His name was Angelo Sabatino, and so far Jack had only seen him once or twice, and in those two sightings Jack had seen that Johnny afforded Angelo more respect than any of the others, and treated him kindly besides. It was clear that Angelo Sabatino would be a problem, but Jack was beginning to believe that the others wouldn't be.

One man – the husband of Johnny's second-cousin or something like that – had gone so far as to express his belief that the empire Johnny Sabatino Sr. had constructed was crumbling under the management of his son, deteriorating the same way Sabatino Sr.'s health was deteriorating. The second-cousin was a widow by the next morning, and Jack had been one of the ones delegated to clean up the mess of blood and brain that stained the warehouse wall. The other men who cleaned with him were silent, but the look in their eyes spoke clearly to Jack. The Sabatino organization had become one large, unstable chemical reaction, teetering dangerously between calm and disastrous. Jack knew chemistry well enough to know that the only thing needed to throw things into complete chaos was one little push, and he was more than happy to play the catalyst in this equation.

He knew all of this information because he blended into the background and listened to the men talk, and because they thought of him as inconsequential, nothing more than some young kid off the streets looking for thrills, whores, and money, they spoke candidly around him. They figured, no doubt, that he'd be too intimidated by them to ever repeat what he heard. They were wrong. Jack repeated every bit of what he heard – but not to the person they expected. Every night on the ride back to the Riley warehouse Jack would go over everything he'd learned or assumed, and Riley would sit and listen with an upward curve to her full lips, not speaking but clearly pleased.

By the end of the first week Jack decided that he was done listening, had heard enough, and was more than ready to start acting.

* * *

Jack went home on the ninth day. Let himself in quietly, unobtrusively, unsurprised to find that the front door was unlocked. It was all quiet when he slipped inside, so quiet that even his steady breathing felt loud and harsh against the silence.

When he turned on the single flickering light that illuminated the living area of his apartment it was obvious that things weren't right – the coffee table that had sat in front of the old and beaten couch for as long as Jack could remember was gone, a patch of stained carpet looking extremely bare and conspicuous in its absence. And that wasn't the only thing missing. They hadn't had much to begin with, and the absence of even a few of those things stood out starkly. The tiny television that had sat on an unsteady perch had disappeared; the old rocking chair his mom had used while she'd nursed him and his sister, the one with a broken armrest from when his dad had knocked Jack over it during a fight, was also missing; and when Jack finally went to inspect his mother's room he found that it was bare and empty, nothing but a soiled old mattress box and one drawer with a broken bottom sitting despondently in the middle of the room. Abandoned.

"Oh, look who it is. Our resident runaway."

He'd been so absorbed in looking around the stark emptiness of his parents' room that he hadn't even noticed the soft footsteps of that girl coming up behind him. When he turned to look at her, her posture was rigid and she radiated coldness.

"I gotta say, you Napiers sure take the cake when it comes to splitting without a backward glance, huh? I mean, if there was a competition set up somewhere . . . . no contest. You'd win the gold without even trying."

Jack ignored her words, ignored the sharp stab she'd taken at him.

"When did she leave?"

"Two days after you did." That girl ambled into the middle of the room with her arms crossed over her chest. She kicked out her foot and nudged the broken drawer a couple inches across the dusty floor. "I stopped by on the third morning to see if . . . ." She cast a quick glance towards Jack and then shook her head ruefully. "Well, anyway. They were already gone. Gathered up all their stuff and left in the middle of the night. She didn't tell anybody. Not even Lola."

Jack dragged his rough hands over his face and sighed heavily. "How did she . . .?"

"Fine," that girl interrupted without letting him finish. It annoyed him immensely, but the sound of her voice was just sweet enough to make him forget about it. "She took it fine, if that's what you're wondering. Not like you'd know. Because you weren't there to break the news to her. Funny how that seems to work out, huh? You running scared whenever things like this happen . . .When Lola needs you the most . . ."

"I was kicked out!"

"You didn't have to leave the way you did. You didn't have to go hide out God-knows-where, stop going to school, stop going to work. You didn't have to stay gone for nine _fucking_ days." Jack flinched at the harshness of the word on her lips; somehow, whenever he'd imagined her saying that word it hadn't been with such bitterness in her voice. He preferred his version, where the word was like a caress, pleading, and was more often than not followed by the word 'me'.

"You should have done things differently. Should have told us where you were going. Should have . . . God, sent us a note at least! Lola's been beside herself. She got so worked up that she made herself sick. When you didn't come home on your birthday she was sure you'd died somewhere, and I had to take her to the hospital that night. She's still there. It was real bad this time."

Jack leaned against the doorframe to his parents' old room and buried his face in the crook of his outstretched arm, breathing deeply to calm the anger and shame that was bubbling just beneath his skin. That girl was right, of course – so right that it made him furious, made him loathe himself, made him want to strike out and place the blame on her just to take it off of himself. But there was no escaping the fact that she _was_ right, though at the time he hadn't really thought about sending notes or assurances – he had forgotten, in the process of trying to get a whole mob to believe he was a nobody, that he actually meant something to someone.

And this was the outcome of his efforts: his mother run off with her slimy boyfriend and most of their things; his sister sick enough to need the hospital; and the girl who he'd been imagining greeting him with soft touches and sweet words about how much she'd missed him glaring at him with such disappointment and resentment that he could hardly meet her eyes.

"So here's your chance to do _something_ right, Jack, and tell me straight where you've been for the past week."

It was typical, really, that she would ask the one question that he could not tell her.

He dragged his tongue over dry lips, cracked from all the brutally cold walks back from Johnny's place to whatever street Willie decided to pick him up on. That girl waited for him to answer, but he had none for her.

"Oh come on, Jack. Aren't you going to make up some wild story, at least? Maybe something about how . . . Oh, I know, how you were on the way home from winning the lottery when, out of nowhere, a couple of ninjas assaulted you, stole the money and left you trussed up like a turkey in some undisclosed location? And it took you this long to untie yourself, escape, and get back here?"

It might have been funny if she wasn't mocking him, hitting him exactly where it hurt. Because she knew him, and she could. And he hated it and adored it at the same time.

He licked his lips again. "No."

"No what? No you aren't going to make up some story or no you aren't going to tell me where you've been?"

"Both. All of it. Everything." That girl shook her head and let out a noise the resembled a low snarl, like that of an angry cat. "I . . . . had to do this."

"Do _what_, exactly? What have you done? Besides get your mom so pissed that she took off? Besides getting Lola so upset that she ended up in the hospital? What have you done, Jack?"

Jack straightened up as the desire to justify his actions rose up inside of him. He could not tell her the truth, knew he could not, but he so wanted to. Wanted to taunt her, torture her with the knowledge that he had been only a few wrong words away from getting a bullet through his skull. Wanted to reach into his jacket and pull out his gun and show it to her, let those innocent eyes feast on something sinful and dark until she recoiled from him. Wanted to take out the stack of cash that was shoved in his pocket, two thousand dollars, and throw it at her feet and ask her how much _she_ had made in the past nine days.

But he didn't. Because no matter how much he wanted to turn the tables around on her and make her feel as horrible about herself, about life, as he did at that moment, he could not do it. This secret was not something to be toyed with, and behind all of his indignance and self-reproach he knew that she had every right to make him feel like this. Knew that what he had done did not match up to what she had. Staying with Lola, comforting her, making sure she wasn't left alone. That was critical, needed.

But what he was doing was needed, too. It just really ached that he had to be the one to make the choice, take the road, that she wasn't able to.

"I'm back now. And that's all that matters."

"All that matters? You lost your job over this, Jack, and your mom and her income are gone for good. What do you think you're going to do for money now?" Her eyes were fiery as she looked at him, waiting for his response, and in the clearness of those irises he saw that she knew that he was hiding something. She almost dared him to answer, to tell her the truth.

Jack turned his back on her, hiding the depths of his own eyes from her unerring gaze and mumbled, "I'll manage. We'll manage."

Really he had no idea if they would; mob money looked a lot less substantial from this point of view – the sole caretaker of a sick child. It'd be up to him to pay for gas, for electric, for rent, for food . . . . he'd joined the mob to put money into Lola's treatment and now it seemed like all of it would be sucked up before he had a chance to pay one cent. One giant leap forward, and a long, hard fall back.

"Manage? Don't kid yourself, Jack. You don't have a job, probably won't be able to get one, and Lola is getting sicker and sicker by the day, and you're off running around the city with some girl . . ."

"Lay off me, all right?" he snapped, and that girl fell silent immediately. By the pale swatch of moonlight that was illuminating her face Jack could tell that she had finally reached the point that was bothering her the most, the point which he had failed to address before he left nine days prior and which had probably been eating her up the entire time he'd been gone.

He wondered how he would react if she took off without saying hardly a word, the only indication of where she'd gone a cryptic reference to a strange guy and a suggestive note. Probably go completely insane with jealousy and anger. But then, he'd never claimed to be the better person between the two of them. That title had gone to her from the very beginning.

When he turned to face her and took her chin in his hand she was visibly shaken, and despite her anger he noted quite clearly the tremor that swept over her entire body the minute their skin touched; he felt it like a current was being channeled through his hands, shocking his nerves. His fingertips swept a graceful curve along her cheekbone and he marveled at the smoothness of her skin like it was the first time he had ever felt it; and then they traveled still further along the contours of her face, until he reached the enticing downward-curve of her full bottom lip. Warm, unsteady breath fanned out across his knuckles and he felt he could almost hear the stony exterior she'd been wearing crumble down around her as she melted into his touch. When he looked at her next he saw all of the raw desperation, jealousy, and betrayal she felt reflected clearly in her eyes.

"Who is she?" she breathed, her voice cracking.

Looking at her, touching her the way he was, he knew he had finally found a question he didn't hesitate in answering.

"Nobody," he muttered, and he didn't think he'd ever spoken truer words. "She's nobody."

That girl's eyes flickered up to meet his own, probing deep behind the darkness and finding only honesty this time, only frankness. It confused her, and she shook her head, unwilling to let it go so quickly after she had dwelt on it for so long.

"She is somebody . . . Is she . . . Have you . . .?" she swallowed, the prospect of finishing those phrases coming across as causing her actual physical pain. "Please, if anything is . . . going on . . . please tell me. I need to know. If she means something to you. If you've . . . if you've . . . slept with her."

She winced after she choked out the last three words, and Jack was quick to entangle his free hand in her hair, cradling the back of her head and pressing his lips to her forehead briefly, hoping he could express every enraptured feeling he felt for her, had ever felt for her, had never felt for Peyton Riley, in that brief meeting of lips and skin.

"No . . ." he murmured, and this time she closed her eyes and listened to the nuances of his tone, the undercurrent of his voice. "No . . . Never."

The tension in her body relaxed and she melted into him, molding her body to fit against his in a seamless motion, as if she didn't even have to think of where to place herself anymore because she was so used to doing this. The familiar weight and delicious warmth of her lithe form pressed near to him let him know, more than any piece of furniture or material possession could, that he was home.

In a rush of confusion and unsettling clarity Jack realized that, at that moment, there was nowhere he'd rather be.

* * *

**A/N:** Hey, hey, hey! So I answered all the reviews I could! If you submit your reviews anonymously I encourage you to get an account – it's really easy and it gets you even more involved with the community! I could send you adequate thanks then, too. : )

The response for the last chapter was AMAZING! I guess you guys really dug Johnny Sabatino, huh? Really, guys, you blow my mind. I hope to hear from all of you on this chapter as well, even though it was sort of a filler – nothing big happened, I know. Sorry. = /

Oh, and – you guys weren't the only thing on this site that's been blowing my mind. I ran across a story that I just HAVE to suggest to you all. I think, when you read the title, that you'll see why:

Bella Swan: Zombie Killer**.**

No, seriously. It's a Twilight fic, no doubt, but it's (obviously) AU, not to mention All-Human and Zombie-Infested. Even if you absolute ABHOR the Twilight series, it's very possible you may just salivate while reading this story from pure literary ecstasy. Unless you have anything against superior writing skills, buckets full of wit and pop culture references, one adorably crushable and geeky Edward, and a kickass shovel-wielding Bella who has the propensity to smash the hell out of her local brain-munching preacher, then you'll probably love it. It's hilarious and real, despite the fact that its main plot is zombies.

There are several moments of gore and more than one episode of the mindless chomping on limbs and ripping out intestines and shit, so reader beware, I guess. But hey, if you're reading this mature story, then you should be able to handle that, right? Only downside is it's only 8 chapters long and a work in (probably way-too-slow) progress.

But really, go check it out. You can find it on my favorites.

Until next chapter! I'll be responding to your reviews, so leave 'em, please! : D


	12. Chapter 12

"We gotta shipment comin' tonight, midnight. Down at the docks. Be there."

Jack licked his lips and peeked around the corner of his apartment door, where he saw Lola lying on his couch with that girl kneeling by her side on the dirty floor. That girl looked like a nurse at the bedside of a dying person. And Lola did play the part. It hadn't been a lie when that girl had told him that this attack had been a bad one – in fact, if anything, she'd been making molehills out of mountains. Lola looked . . . like a corpse, if he was being completely honest with himself. And even with Johnny's voice in his ear telling him where he needed to be that night, it was impossible for him to think of leaving his sister so ill with a clear conscience. Still, he knew well enough that he could not stay.

"All right, I will."

There was a click and then the line went dead, and Jack stuffed the phone into his pocket. His fingers brushed over the gun he carried around on him at all times. He had taken to doing it unconsciously, reassuring himself that it was still there, still on his person, just in case he ever needed it. So far he hadn't, but that was not to say he wouldn't. He'd been practicing enough for any eventuality over at the Riley warehouse, with Willie coaching him on things like grip, posture, and aim. Jack was a fast learner, and it seemed that wielding a gun, shooting one, came natural to him – he could put a bullet between the eyes of a man fifty yards away, if necessary. Part of him was sure it would be, one day.

That girl and his sister knew nothing. The phone he had tucked inside of his pocket vibrated when contacted, and both were oblivious to where he disappeared to during the day. With Lola sick and bedridden and that girl attending a school on the outskirts of the Narrows, there was nobody to discover that he hadn't been to class in weeks. Nobody to notice that, though he told them both that he had managed to get his job at the butcher's back, it wasn't there that he went to work. And so long as his accounts stayed hidden, there was nobody to mention the fact that Lola's hospital bills had decreased by exactly $2,374 in the past month or so. Not an exorbitant sum, to be sure, but . . . a start. But even if the bills were fifty thousand less than they had been, nobody would notice.

And he wanted it to stay that way. Jack didn't even want to imagine how that girl would look at him if she discovered what he'd been doing, what he would be doing. Joining the mob, working for a man who a girl like her considered to be the scum of the earth, hustling up clients for money that belonged to the mob and threatening them with death if they didn't pay up, standing in for a drug dealer who'd gone and got himself shot in the shoulder, and of course freezing his balls off down at the docks whenever a shipment of "product" came in. He'd only done the latter once, so far, and it had been one night full of agonizingly superfluous idle conversation and drinking. Since Jack was disinclined to do either, the most he could do was sit back and bite his tongue when the other men began to heckle him for being so square. They were too low-level to hold any interest to him, or even observe. So far Jack had his attention trained on the middle-level men, doing his best to get closer to them and put himself in a position to start distorting a few loyalties, just as Riley had told him to. Nothing had come of it, as of yet.

But he wasn't throwing in the towel so soon.

Jack was just about to wander back inside of his apartment when a heavy thudding of footsteps came from the end of the hall, where the staircase to each floor was situated. Out of a sort of new, ingrained mistrust, Jack felt his eyes narrow and his hand went immediately to the inside of his jacket. He wanted to be ready if it happened to be Johnny or one of his men come to call. Had they found him and Riley out? Was there yet another "spy" that Riley hadn't spoken to him of, one who might have squealed when questioned?

There was a wheezing noise and Jack's middle-aged and balding landlord, Wheeler, came lumbering into view. He was a thin man, more bones and skin than muscle or fat, and generally reasonable, with the same careless, _laiseez faire_ attitude that so many in the Narrows took on when it came to dealing with anybody not immediately concerning them. This came in handy when dealing with the situation of an underage kid living alone with his baby sister, but it wasn't appreciated all those long years when Jack's dad had beaten the holy hell out of him and his mom every night and nobody had said anything about it, though everyone had known.

"Ah, hey kid. I was just comin' up here to talk to ya." Wheeler coughed heavily, gasping for breath and holding out one finger in an expression for Jack to hold on and let him compose himself. Once the fit had subsided Wheeler wiped at watering eyes and groused, "Shit, I gotta quit them death sticks. Can't hardly walk up the stairs no more."

"It's not the end of the month yet, Wheeler," Jack stated. Though Wheeler meant nothing to him personally, Jack really hoped he didn't keel over and die. The man was fair enough to work with amiably, which was all Jack asked for in a landlord.

Wheeler straightened up and shook his head morosely, making his way towards Jack. "Aw, shit kid, I know that. And don't think I don't know alotta things 'round here. It's my building, ya know? I know your mama and that lump went and ran off about a month ago. I know that you're livin' here alone with that sick sis of yours. 'N listen, I don't give a rat's ass who you live with, so long as the rent gets paid. You could house the devil himself up in your spare room and it wouldn't bother me none s'long as I got my hundred-fifty dollars a month. . ."

"And you do get your hundred and fifty dollars each month," Jack cut in.

"Aw, kid . . ."

"Aw, kid, what? It's not the end of the month yet, and I've got the money lined up. What do you want, Wheeler?"

Wheeler scratched uneasily at his ear and said, "Listen, I hate to do this to you . . ."

"Do _what_?" Jack demanded, fingers clenching into tight fists. If the man opened his mouth and said the words 'You're evicted', Jack wasn't sure what he'd do. He had a feeling the gun in his jacket might be put to use in some way.

"Ya see, your mama, she was a bit . . . behind . . . on her payments." Wheeler shrugged helplessly. "Said that with your daddy's funeral and her girl's cancer treatments she couldn't afford rent fer a while. She cried 'n all. What'd you expect an old fuck like me to do, her bein' so pretty 'n everythin'? I told her she could wait three months or so, you know . . . Get back on her feet. She said she'd only need a coupla months . . . And then she took off . . ."

Jack blinked down at Wheeler's hunched form, unable to formulate any sort of response to the information Wheeler had just revealed to him. That his mother had lied about having no money for rent when he, Jack, had made sure that the rent was paid every month. Gave her the hundred and fifty dollars out of his own pocket, worked overtime at that butcher's shop, just so she could use the money she made at her two jobs and put it straight into Lola's treatment. And if she hadn't paid Wheeler that money . . .

"She took it. . ." he muttered, dragging a hand across his brow.

Wheeler looked so sheepish that Jack longed to punch him straight in the nose. "I guess she musta been savin' up to . . . get her new place with her man."

He wasn't sure why it was this information hit him so hard, caught him so off guard. It should have been expected, he should have known that she would do something like that . . . But his money, all of that money he'd made thinking that he was _helping_ Lola, helping his family, and then, now . . . She'd been planning on leaving all that time, probably from the first moment she met Bill and realized she could make a clean break of it. His money had gone straight to her cause. Had helped her abandon them.

"And I hate to do it, kid, but . . . I need that money. By the end of the month. I'm behind myself and . . . well, ain't nobody in this place gonna have a roof over their head if I don't get that extra six hundred from you."

Jack felt himself shaking, was aware in a peripheral sort of way that Wheeler had taken a few steps back from him and seemed uneasy in his presence, but none of that seemed to matter. The money he needed to cough up was foremost in his mind, and the scorching hatred he felt towards his mother, that sorry excuse for a worthwhile human being, was blotting out anything else.

"Listen, kid, we all got problems. Hell, you can find my only boy standing over on Cicero every weekday night, decked out in fishnets and a miniskirt and some fake tits. The point is . . . don't let this own you. Life's a bitch, and so was your mama, but that ain't the end of the world. Just get the money and . . . well, worry about feelin' bad about how you did it later."

Jack breathed in sharply through his nostrils, his jaw clenched to the point where his teeth were crying out in agony from the friction of grinding enamel. When he spoke his voice was tight, the muscles of his throat tensed and rigid. "You'll have your money. Don't worry about it."

"Good . . . good . . ." Wheeler shot a furtive look into the ajar apartment door, where Lola's bald head was visible poking out from underneath of a stack of blankets. "Your sis . . . is she . . .?"

"None of your business, Wheeler," Jack snapped. "If you weren't so _sensitive_ we wouldn't be in this mess right now. You're a landlord, not a grief counselor."

"Shit, I know, I know. I am sorry, kid."

Their eyes met and Wheeler shrunk back visibly, a sudden expression of fear on his face.

"I. Am not. A _kid_."

Wheeler's mouth opened and closed like a fish's, backing down the hallway step by unsteady step.

"'C-Course you ain't. I'll, uh . . . the end of the month, eh?" Wheeler touched two fingers to his forehead and then turned and rushed away, disappearing down the staircase.

Jack let out a heavy breath and then covered his face with his hands, blocking the site of the dingy hallway, with its peeling wallpaper and muddy water stains, from his sight.

"Bravo, Jack. You made Wheeler run faster than he has in years." That girl's cool voice drifted towards him from his right, and when her fingers reached out to stroke his arm he found that he was too full of hatred, too angry, to allow it. He shrugged her off and turned from her, neglecting to look her in the face, even. No doubt it would lead to her making some annoying comment about the state of his _eyes_, again . . .

"I can get some money," that girl said softly, doing well at keeping the hurt from her voice. "Jack, you know . . ."

"_Don't_. If you even _mention_ that, I swear, I'll . . ."

That girl sighed gustily at his words in annoyance, and then snapped, "You'll what? Hit me? Go ahead. You know, I'm not a little girl anymore, either. And I'm not the delicate white flower that you seem to think I am. I mean, let's face it. I'm the daughter of a whore, Jack. Who ever thought I wouldn't turn to her profession at least once, one day? And at least my reason would be something meaningful. I wouldn't regret it . . . If it helped you and Lola . . ."

When he turned to face her she met his own flaming eyes with a hard glint in her own, and she did not slump or back away from him. It infuriated him that she had brought up this subject, brought it up after he'd _told_ her specifically not to say another word about it.

"You think I'd use money that you got from whoring yourself around?"

"I don't have to sleep with them, Jack! There are other things I could do, things that they'd pay a little less for, but . . ."

"Oh! Oh, so now we're talking about jerking guys off, or maybe getting on your _knees_ like a common bar slut, and sucking their dicks! Hmm? Because that – _that_ puts my mind at ease."

She winced at his words, "Don't be so crude . . ."

"Crude! I'm not the one suggesting I _do_ it! _That's_ crude!" Jack let out a bark of humorless laughter before reaching out to grip her slender arm and yank her towards him. Her body pitched against his chest and when she raised her free arm to gain leverage over him and free herself he caught that one as well, pinning her against the wall with her arms outstretched above her head.

Her blue eyes were wide and full of shock as she looked up at him, and her breathing was coming out in ragged, uneven breaths.

"What? Didn't think I'd manhandle you? Since you're such a . . . _delicate_ . . . flower."

Jack smirked down at her.

"You're . . . . you're hurting me." Her voice quavered on the word 'hurting' and the meekness of its pitch thrilled him. Their eyes were locked as he brought his face down next to hers, and he saw the fear they held with a sort of disgusted fascination.

"_Good_."

Her pupils dilated and he knew he had her terrified of him, now. Which was what he had wanted.

"Now that I've got your attention . . . Let me make this _per_fectly clear. Don't. Mention. This. Again. And just in case you're planning on, uh . . . . _sneaking_ around, taking some guy into a public restroom and blowing him and then pretending that your dad gave you an extra three hundred for the month –" She cast her eyes downward, and his fingernails bit into the soft skin of her wrist as he took in this expression of guilt. His voice shook with anger as he continued, and even he heard the darkness in it. In a way it even frightened him. "I _will_ find out. And I'll hunt those men down like the animals they are and I will _slaughter_ them. D'you understand? So unless you wanna live with, uh, 'innocent' people dying because of you, then . . . ."

"I won't mention it again, I swear . . ." she rasped, her arms twisting in an effort to shake him off of her. "But Jack . . .?"

"Yeah?"

She brought her knee up in a violent upward motion and slammed it, hard, right into his groin. Jack felt blinding, flashing pain, so acute it made his eyes water. He crumpled immediately, landing sprawled out on the floor, gasping, trying to fight the urge to vomit where he lay. If he'd had anything substantial to eat that day he was sure he would have puked, but as it was he lay dry heaving as that girl crouched down beside him, smoothing one cool hand over his flushed face.

"Sorry babe. But you really ought to learn how to treat your girl with more respect." Jack wanted to swear at her and, for some reason, laugh hysterically at how she'd turned the tables on him. But he could do neither, because he had no air in his body, no voice to do it with. She swept down and placed a quick kiss on the top of his head. "You ever treat me like that again and I'll cut it off."

He groaned in response and slumped further onto the filthy floor, gasping for breath he could not seem to catch.

It occurred to him that she always did have a way of taking his breath away. In one way or another.

* * *

When he arrived at the docks at ten before midnight, he was limping. And it did not go unnoticed.

"Hey, Gimp, whassamatter? You get fucked up the ass or somethin'?"

Jack shot a glare of loathing towards one large, burly thug. A lower level man, somebody who was great at hustling clients because of his mean stature and sizeable bulk. He was as dumb as dirt and as ugly as it, too.

The men surrounding the burly thug – was his name Gerald? Or Jim? It had that 'j' sound, he remembered – laughed uproariously at his comment.

"He looks like the type to take it, dun't 'e?" Jackson – that was it, Jackson – crowed happily, slapping his knee. "Some guy catch you alone in a back alley 'er somethin'?"

"Hey, hey! Shut up, you goons!" The men's laughter lowered in volume, until they were only left chortling and casting Jack disdainful glances. An olive-skinned man strode up beside Jack and for a minute he was sure Johnny himself had come down to the docks, which would be extremely odd, not to mention noteworthy – Johnny never put himself into situations that made him uncomfortable, and sitting outside in the freezing cold with his hired help would definitely fall under that category. But when the man got level with Jack he realized it wasn't Johnny at all, but one of his cousins, a top-level man who usually sat at Johnny's right hand side. A long scar ran down one temple and through his left eyebrow, giving his face a very lopsided appearance. Angelo Sabatino. "Can't even go to take a leak without you idiots actin' like fuckin' baboons."

"Aw, Angelo, we can't help it. New Boy's gone and bottomed up for some guy –"

"Looks like he just got kicked in the nuts, to me." Angelo Sabatino turned his scarred face towards Jack and said, "Someone get in a good jab to the family jewels, kid?"

Jack grimaced at the use of 'kid' – did he wake up looking five years younger today, or something? – but replied, grudgingly, "Yeah."

"Musta been a broad. Ain't no guy can take that shot with a clean conscience."

Jack composed himself and shot a look at Angelo, a man closer to Johnny than any of the others, and so fortuitously placed near him on this cold winter night. This was exactly what he'd been waiting for.

"Uh, yeah . . . a girl I was trying to . . . get in good with, if you know what I'm saying."

He heard that girl's voice echoing in his head from so long ago. _"He's just a _guy_. And so are you. Guys are supposed to talk about stuff like that."_

Jack turned to Angelo and gave him a lopsided, slightly sheepish grin, and the man immediately let out a knowing laugh.

"Shit, do I ever. Well, we all better make ourselves comfortable. I just got a call in from the captain and he said that he's gonna be late. Had a surprise inspection from the coppers – some . . . officer who got tipped off or somethin'. He didn't find nothin', though."

A round of groans went up, but Jack made no indication that he cared one whit about sitting out in the cold. Even as Jackson – the beefiest of them all – complained about his fingers freezing off, Jack felt completely at his leisure. In fact, the cold almost felt familiar to him, because of all those late afternoons he had spent back in the meat freezer where he used to work. The job really hadn't changed that much, if he thought about it.

Jack slid himself up onto one small pile of skids that was surrounded by other, taller piles, thus blocking any sharp gusts of winds that whistled their way through the docks. The other men scrambled around to do the same, each shoving themselves into nooks and crannies and wrapping their jackets tight around their bodies. Jack flipped up the collar to his own coat and winced as he sat down, his offended balls still throbbing painfully and the now-familiar queasiness in the pit of his stomach flaring up once again.

When he opened his eyes he noted that Angelo Sabatino had climbed up onto the opposite side of the skid, leaning against one of the piles with his legs spread and his hands dangling between his thighs.

"Johnny likes you, ya know." Angelo shrugged and pat his jacket down, finally reaching inside and pulling out a pack of cigarettes and a light. He pulled out one cigarette and then held the open pack towards Jack, offering. "Smoke?"

Jack shook his head minutely and watched as Angelo stuck the cigarette into his mouth and then flicked his lighter open, lowering his face to the flickering orange flame. The end of the cigarette burned dark brownish-red and then the air was filled with sharp, acrid smoke. Jack inhaled deeply, hating the smell with every fiber of his being for its association with his mother but unable to keep his subconscious mind from craving the cigarette-tainted air.

Angelo inhaled deeply and then removed the cigarette, letting the smoke linger in his lungs before tilting his head back and exhaling a stream of smoke and hot breath into the chill night.

"Ah, fuck. That's good. You're glad you didn't get into these things, man." Angelo sighed, shoving the pack of cigarettes back into his jacket and zipping up with haste. "Anyway, like I was sayin'. . . uh . . . what _was_ I sayin'?"

"Johnny likes me," Jack offered up, wishing to steer the conversation back onto ground he could reap valuable rewards from.

Angelo shook his head ruefully and then tapped his scarred temple. "Right. Can't remember nothin' since I got this beauty. But he does. Like you, I mean. Thinks you're real smart, ya know? What's the word he used . . . . somethin' like . . . shit, I dunno. Somethin' good about your work ethic. Willing to work for it . . . whatever it is . . ."

Angelo took another long drag and cast troubled eyes down towards his shoes as he blew the smoke out in front of him. Jack let his eyes roam over the inch-thick gash that ran across the man's brow. It was a nasty slice.

"Got it when I was nineteen. The scar." Angelo looked up at Jack. "I ain't ashamed of it, or tellin' how I got it. Ain't nobody should be ashamed of their scars . . . They make us who we are, ya know? _True_ tattoos . . . Reflect who we really are, not what we want people to think of us. 'Cuz we don't choose them – well, most of the time. And even if you do, that says a helluva lot."

Another drag, another heavy exhale. "I was on a little motorboat with my brother, Danny. Had a secret compartment full of heroin. We're talkin' . . . . five mil . . . I _think_. But, I guess the coast guard thought we looked shifty . . . two Wops in a motorboat, 'n all. Had to be up to somethin', ya know? So they take off after us, and Danny, he gets scared. They took him in a couple years back for possession and if they caught him again he'd be servin' major time. So he gunned it, and I was standin' up . . . . went right over the side. Rudder caught me, nearly took out my eye. Coast guard fished me out. Danny just . . . kept on goin'. They shot him dead later that year."

"Bad luck," Jack put in, sure that he had to say something to that affect after such a story.

"Sure, I guess. I still got my eye, right? Even if I can't remember Ma's birthday anymore. Sometimes I forget my own, too, but I guess that makes the cake a nice surprise. Like it's always a surprise party." Angelo smiled and inhaled again.

"Some girls around here must love it," Jack reflected conversationally; the idle musing sounded so forced to him, so false and hollow, and yet he knew it was necessary. "The, uh, _danger_ aspect, and all."

Angelo's hand gave one twitch and the cigarette fell from his grasp, right through the cracks of the skids to the ground far below. Angelo swore and then ran a hand through unruly black hair – a shaking hand. Jack felt his eyes narrow at this display of nervous energy. The mere mention of women seemed to unsettle Angelo Sabatino, and Jack wondered why that was, and if he could, possibly, use it to his advantage.

"Uh . . . Sure. Some of 'em. But them girls ain't really my type, anyway." The slender Italian gave another grin – a shaky one, this time – just as two flashes of light lit up the dockyard. "That's the signal. Come on, let's get this shit over with so I can go unthaw my nuts."

Jack watched Angelo Sabatino hop down from the skid they both sat on, and just before he disappeared out of sight he stopped and turned back around, as if he'd forgotten something. He looked up at Jack and said, "It don't mean much, seeing as I'm just a second-hand chump, but for the record . . . I like you, too."

Angelo nodded at him and then disappeared around a pile of skids just as Jack hopped down and caught his breath at the sharp pain that shot through his gut and groin. Once his composure was regained he allowed himself to think on what Angelo Sabatino had just told him. He couldn't see, right then, how Johnny's cousin liking him would matter, either.

But he was certain that he would before this was all over. And he didn't think any of them would like him when that time came.

* * *

"Your balls okay?"

Jack looked up and then glared down at Lola, who was sitting upright on the couch with a smile on her face and a glint of mischievousness in her eyes. She still looked rather ghastly, with her skin chalky pale and her eyes sunken and darkly bruised, but healthier than she had looked. Jack suppressed the feeling of relief he felt at seeing her looking better.

"Ya really pissed Louise off, ya know."

"Watch your mouth," Jack snapped, shrugging off his jacket and placing it carefully, folded, onto the kitchen counter. He'd already slipped his phone into the cavernous pocket of his jeans. "And yeah, I know I did. I kinda got the message when she was burying her kneecap into my unmentionables."

He ran one hand through his hair, unaccustomed to the shortness – Johnny had demanded, in a fit of rage once they'd all stopped back at the warehouse, that Jack get his hair under control. So Angelo had pulled him over to a bathroom and took a pair of scissors to the light brown locks, insisting that he do it because Jack 'couldn't see what he was doing, anyhow'. But Jack couldn't really fight the gesture anyway, because Angelo was somebody that he needed to get closer to. Meeting him down at the docks had been an unexpected and undeniably golden opportunity. He'd be the worst sort of fool to let such a thing pass him by.

"When did ya get your hair cut?" Lola demanded.

Jack shrugged wearily and replied, "Uh . . . I did it before work with a pair of scissors. You know, the ones we use to cut up intestines and stuff. Wanna come smell?"

Lola scrunched up her face and squealed with distaste and Jack smiled. His balls still ached, he didn't like the haircut, that girl was probably still mad at him for how he'd treated her (and he was beginning to feel ashamed about it, too), and his fingers still felt numb from the cold, but none of that seemed to matter just then. Not with Lola looking so healthy. Acting like his kid sister and not a dying girl.

"Where is she, anyway?" Jack asked, moving over to lower himself on the ground next to the couch Lola sat on.

"What, Louise? I dunno, her place." Jack said nothing and Lola clicked her tongue impatiently, before finally blurting out, "Ya know, you two act so stupid. Why don't you just go over there and make sweet love to her? I think that'd solve alotta problems."

"What – Lola, I already told you to watch your mouth," Jack spluttered.

"What? I'm fifteen, not four. I _do_ know about sex, ya know. Louise bought me a bunch of romance novels and there was one called _'Never Trust A Scoundrel' _– you'd be the scoundrel – where this beautiful virgin falls prey to this roguishly handsome scoundrel, and they spend the entire book trying ta deny that all they wanna do is just tear off their clothes and have hot sex all over the place. I mean –"

Jack pressed his fingertips to his forehead in an effort to dispel the sudden migraine he had acquired as soon as the words 'hot sex' came out of his sister's mouth.

"Just – Close your mouth, all right? Stop. _Stop_. You're going to give me an aneurysm. Is that what you want?" Jack snorted in disgust and shook his head, shifting uncomfortably. "Why would that girl give you books like that, anyway? What's she trying to do?"

"Give me somethin' ta do while I'm on this couch," Lola replied promptly. "Not everyone has exciting lives down at the local butcher's. We gotta live vicariously."

She reached over with one frail arm and tousled Jack's cropped hair, and he allowed the motion, a rare smile – devoid of any sarcasm, any wryness, any bitterness – on his face. For a moment it was just the two of them again, Lola before her sickness, or even at the very beginning, when she would joke and smile and laugh and tease him. When the shadow of death wasn't lurking behind her eyes. For a moment, everything seemed . . . . better. As if maybe, someday, it might be all right. If he just kept trying, if he would only keep on. He was able to indulge in the thought that maybe, just maybe, he might be able to change things.

And then he was aware of a drop of wetness falling onto his shoulder, and then another, and another, until he looked up and saw Lola dabbing at a bleeding nose. Spots of her blood were staining his shirt, the red creeping outward on the grey fabric. Spidery tendrils that reached and consumed. Lola smiled weakly at him and opened her mouth, probably to apologize for staining his shirt, but before the words could pass her lips she coughed – once, twice, three times, and blood spilled over her lips in rivulets, down her chin and neck. Jack stood immediately but Lola just shook her head and held up one hand to stop him, using her other to wipe the blood from her mouth. It smeared upwards on one cheek, and then she swiped at the other side. When she looked up at him and smiled Jack felt as though that girl had only just kicked him in the balls again.

Her face, so chalk white and sunken blackly around her eyes, wore what looked like a grotesque smile, the blood stretching up on each cheek in a curving arc. She resembled some deathlike, macabre excuse for a clown, only nothing was funny in the presence of a face like that – no, nothing could ever be funny, because Jack was sure he was looking into the face of Death itself, and his sister was only the body it was inhabiting.

Her smile turned grim as she looked up at him, saw his horror and repulsion, and when she spoke her voice was lilting, laced with bitter sarcasm.

"Oh come on, big brother . . . Why so serious?"

* * *

**A/N:** REVIEW! : D


	13. Chapter 13

**Note:**_ This chapter is dedicated to all my readers & reviewers, most prominently the ever-supportive __**crystalstars88 **__and __**Imogen Kain. **_

* * *

Overnight, Jack had gone from a trivial crony in the Sabatino organization to somebody Angelo Sabatino deemed 'good people'.

It started the night after the shipment at the docks came and Angelo had helped Jack tame his wildly out of control hair at Johnny's snappish request. The cell phone that Johnny Sabatino had given Jack had vibrated insistently at nearly ten o'clock. Jack had been expecting Johnny to bark another order into his ear and then hang up without another word. He'd been taken aback when, instead, Angelo Sabatino's slightly faltering voice invited him to stop by and play a game of poker and have a couple drinks. Jack had accepted immediately, and though Angelo wasn't expecting him for just over an hour yet, he had left from his place at once. It was necessary to stop by to tell Riley about this development, and he knew he couldn't use the cell phone Sabatino had given him to call. He was almost certain the phone was tapped in some way.

When he'd reached the Riley warehouse and told Peyton about Angelo's offer, as well as his announcement that both Johnny and himself liked Jack, Peyton's eyes were smoldering with the sort of heat he hadn't seen displayed in them since before his first meeting with Johnny.

"What do you know about Angelo Sabatino?" Jack had asked her.

"Not more than the fact that he's got an ugly gash down the side of his face and he can hardly remember his own name. Why?"

Jack had contemplated this, chewing on his bottom lip in thought. "Just doing research. He's . . . friendly. Too friendly. You think it's a trap? What's he want with an unknown goon like me? It's not natural . . . .He's gotta be working undercover for Johnny, right?"

Riley had thrown back her head and laughed shrilly. "Angelo? Listen, Jay. I may not know much about that idiot, but I do know this – he's probably the last person capable of pulling one over on the likes of _you_. Maybe he has . . . alternative reasons for wanting you around."

He'd stared at Riley blankly. "Like what? You think he wants me to do a job for him?"

One slim-fingered and carefully manicured hand had covered Riley's smirking lips from view as she'd sniggered out her answer. "Oh yeah, I'd say he'd _love_ for you do a . . . job . . . for him."

"What . . . you mean Angelo's . . . a _faggot_?" Jack had cast his mind back to when he'd mentioned women in Angelo's presence, and the way his fingers had shook so violently he'd dropped the cigarette he'd been smoking. It had been odd, surely, but a gay?

"If the sequined glove fits, Jay. I mean, have _you_ ever seen him show an interest in women?" Riley had let out another mirthless laugh, as if she was fully enjoying this turn of events. "Now listen, you know what you have to do, right? Angelo Sabatino might be witless, and a fag on top of it, but he's Johnny's right hand man and there's _nobody_ Johnny trusts more. He's still part of the organization because the family loves him too much, and his memory's too bad for him to do anything else for a living. If his mind was better he might have been in a prime position to usurp Johnny – God knows the rest of the Sabatinos prefer him to my bastard husband. But as it is, he's only worth the amount of loyalty he shows. I'm not sure if Angelo has it in him to deceive anyone intentionally."

Jack had sneered and Riley in absolute disgust at what she was suggesting. "Oh, no. No, no, _no_. If you're suggesting that I _seduce_ Angelo Sabatino –"

"I'm not saying you have to wine and dine the poor dope, just go along with whatever he wants to do . . . If you turn Angelo down, or worse, humiliate him, then nobody can be sure what'll happen to you. Whatever his reason, this opportunity is like traitor _gold_. Don't fucking blow it."

"I'm _straight_. Exclusively." Jack had stated, firmly. He hadn't signed on to fag around with some Italian mobster – that, to him, was a deal breaker.

Riley had swept her long blonde hair away from her face and stared down at him from under mascara coated eyelashes. "Well, you can back out, if you want. But it might be pretty hard for you to get the sort of money Johnny and I are paying you. What're you gonna do, Jay? Go work back at that smelly butcher's shop for ten bucks a day? You think that'll cover whatever bills you have? _If_ they even want you, that is. And if not . . . . you'll be in pretty bad shape, huh?"

Their gazes had met, a triumphant glare glinting just behind the navy eyes of Riley and unsettling him greatly. There had been a haughty, exultant sort of smugness about her countenance . . . A look that told him she knew so much more than he'd expected her to bother to uncover.

"So, you finally tracked me successfully, huh? Took you long enough. I must admit that I'm . . . . disappointed. I had you pegged for a sharp girl, Peyton. Maybe your heart just wasn't in it. But come on then, spill the beans. What did you find out?"

"Oh . . . everything. Except for your name. Willie went asking that landlord of yours, but the man wouldn't say a word. Said he didn't need any trouble and the best way to keep out of it was to saying nothing at all." Riley had grinned, displaying rows of perfectly straight and glinting white teeth. "You've no idea how surprised I was to find out that you have a sickly baby sister. Imagine, you – cold, cynical, ruthless Jay – actually giving a damn about someone. And not _just_ one – oh no! The sister was a surprise, but that jumped up little pre-teen girlfriend of yours was something else entirely. I mean, come on Jay . . . . a _Catholic_ girl? What is she going for, anyway? Sainthood? A position in the church?" Riley had laughed scathingly, her words taking a biting edge and scraping along Jack's skin as if he were made out of chalkboard and she was all sharply filed nails. "Or maybe she's just a complete fake . . . After all, _truly _godfearing girls would never even _dream_ of having a boy like you slipping his hands underneath of their skirts."

Jack had bit his tongue until he felt blood fill his mouth. Riley's discovery of not only his sister, but of that girl, and her successive taunts about the latter, had enraged him. He'd stood from the chair he'd taken a seat in at the beginning of the conversation and strolled over to her casually, keeping his posture loose and his countenance uncaring, until he was within inches of Riley, his nose nearly brushing her rouge-colored cheek.

"What's the matter, Peyton? _Jealous_? Because that, uh . . . 'jumped up pre-teen' manages to do what your experienced body can't seem to?"

Peyton had inhaled sharply, sucking in air through clenched teeth in a violent inward hiss. The words she had uttered were tight. "And what would that be?"

With a smile of victory on his face, Jack had trailed one lazy hand down Petyon's cashmere-clad arm and whispered, "Tempt me."

He'd swept away without another word, leaving Peyton fuming in his wake. But despite delivering that last stab at Riley's pride, Jack had felt unsettled, shaken – he hadn't felt like he'd won that round. He didn't feel like he'd won at all.

* * *

Angelo Sabatino took a long drag from the cigarette clutched in his hand and ran one thinly boned finger down the thick gash running along his temple in a gesture that Jack now found commonplace and familiar. The two of them sat waiting at the docks on a pile of skids again – a new pile, situated in a slightly less opportunistic place, where the bitingly cold late January wind managed to sneak through and whip against their skin at unfortunate moments. Jack had lost count of how many times the two of them met up down at the docks and found a place to shelter themselves from the wind. It had become as usual and routine as working at that butcher's shop had been, as usual as seeing that girl everyday, and Jack was endlessly surprised and almost suspicious of himself whenever he let his subconscious mind admit that . . . . he didn't mind it. In a way, he almost liked it. And no matter how hard he'd tried not to, Jack liked Angelo Sabatino.

The feeling was foreign to him, a weakness in and of itself. He hadn't anticipated feeling anything more or less than complete apathy for the mobsters and thugs he associated himself with. But then, Angelo Sabatino wasn't like the other mobsters. He was a little bumbling, annoyingly forgetful, and of course Jack was still wary about his unknown sexuality. But still, despite his blatant flaws, Angelo Sabatino was somehow more . . . human . . . than the rest of them. There was something charismatic about the young Italian that put Jack at ease. The openness of him, maybe, or the way Jack could look into the man's eyes and see nothing but frankness, nothing but good humor and at some times mild confusion, and at others, vitality and wit.

It'd all started at that poker game. It'd been him and a few other integral Sabatino men, the ones that Angelo were closest with. His cousins, men who he treated like his brothers, the men he'd known as small boys. Sometimes Jack forgot that they weren't all well-oiled machines, murdering and selling drugs and trading off whores like second-hand clothing. They'd been small children, once, who had played together in the slums before the Sabatinos made a name for themselves. They'd played cops and robbers and traded theories on how they'd run the world, one day. Jack listened as Angelo, so caught up in reminiscing that he'd nearly forgotten they were playing poker altogether, his hand lying in plain sight for Jack to see, told him that back then they'd all been sure that creating a car that ran on trash would solve every problem the world ever had. Hilarity ensued. And then, of course, they grew up and realized that in order to create a car that would revolutionize the problems of pollution and the depletion of natural resources simultaneously, they'd probably have to be somewhat good at math. Such is life. And then, of course, there was the moment when they'd watched, shivering in their mothers' arms as the women sobbed in a group together, as their homes got firebombed by rich white boys from the Palisades. That was when the illusions shattered, and it was around that time when Johnny Senior had taken the Narrows.

Angelo was charismatic, trusting to the point of stupidity. Of course, Jack still wasn't certain whether or not he was pulling one over on him, but the more time he spent with the man the less likely that possibility seemed to be. The injury he'd sustained in that boating accident made it difficult for him to remember his own middle name most days; Jack wasn't sure if he even had the mental capabilities to execute a plan without giving something away. Anyway, by the fourth instance he'd spent time with Angelo he'd come to the conclusion that Johnny couldn't possibly be brainless enough to rest his hopes of taking Jack, and in extension Peyton, down by using the mob's most forgetful killer.

He was a killer, and Jack never let himself forget that. The second time Angelo had invited him to come along with him on a job it'd been to hustle a dealer owing more than five thousand dollars' worth of drugs to the mob. He'd disappeared with it and Angelo had managed to track him down. They'd given him time to cough up either the drugs or its worth in money, and he hadn't. Jack watched as the man, shaking from withdrawal, an obvious victim of the drugs he made his liveliness by, plead with Angelo, and then watched as Angelo emptied his weapon into the man's chest. That was the first night he'd helped throw a body into the river, and Angelo had told "So a guy walks into a bar" jokes the entire time.

But despite this display of routine violence, Jack had never felt personally on guard around Angelo. He wasn't overtly butch, nor was he egotistical like his cousin, nor was he out to prove anything, as so many other mobsters who weren't in charge but who held the Sabatino name were. It wasn't a giant pissing contest with Angelo, which made things easy. Almost too easy. Jack had never really met a male who hadn't bothered him in great some way. Maybe it was the fact that Angelo never talked about women the way other men were so apt to do, the same way Jack never seemed to find the desire to. He didn't believe it was, as Riley had suggested, because Angelo was gay. Maybe it was the scar or maybe some girl had given Angelo some internal injuries he'd just never gotten over yet, but the topic of women was sensitive, and Jack understood that – Angelo didn't speak about whomever it was he had on his mind, and Jack was, as always, tight-lipped about the _only_ one he ever had on his mind.

It was a mutual respect for that which, Jack figured, must have endeared them to each other. Or else Angelo was working an angle that was, as of yet, unknown to him. Whatever it was, Jack was content to let things play out as they would. Angelo continued to invite him over to play poker and "warm the other guys up to him", and this was absolutely critical in what Jack was planning. If, by some grace of God, Angelo could be swayed . . . . Then everything would be sealed in Peyton's favor. Angelo was his "in"; it was just plain dumb luck that he wasn't a repulsive one.

"David Jones . . ." Angelo finally answered, responding to his part of an idle game which consisted of trying to guess the real names of those famous few who took on an assumed title. The pause had lasted at least ten minutes, minutes full of annoyed puffs on his cigarette and scrunched brows. "David Bowie's real name is David . . . Jones."

"Took you long enough. That was an easy one," Jack responded irritably, shifting uncomfortably on the skid. Angelo's mental limitations were a source of never-ending vexation to Jack, who had no conception of how a human could possibly process information so slowly. "When is that shipment going to get here? We've been waiting for over an hour."

Angelo took another drag – a triumphant one, this time; the game was particularly difficult for him, but he insisted on playing it – and shrugged carelessly. "Aw, I dunno Jay . . . we're havin' a lot of problems gettin' the shipments in lately, you know that. That fuckin' cop down at MCU . . . what's his name . . ."

"Gordon," Jack put in, and Angelo pointed a finger at Jack and nodded resolutely.

"That's the bastard . . . . He's been sniffin' around, stirrin' up trouble. He busted one of our main suppliers a week back. We're thinkin' about bringin' in some mules straight from . . . some country down there by Mexico . . . They won't expect that." Angelo shrugged again and then continued, as if just remembering, "I think I'm doin' that in a few days."

Jack frowned heavily and scratched at his eyebrow. Angelo Sabatino handling a job larger than packing and unpacking crates down at the docks made Jack unsettled. It would be so easy for Johnny to rid himself of somebody he thought might be easy manipulated (as he was doing so very often now, shooting thugs he deemed 'weak' on the spot) on a mission that would surely get him thrown in jail, or killed. Without Angelo, everything was shot to hell. "How does that work?"

"Well, I've done it a few times. Not in a year or so, though . . . I think . . . oh yeah, you go pick up some pretty little girls from the airport, take 'em to a hotel, and get the drugs from 'em."

"The dogs don't smell it?"

"Nah. Can't sniff out what's stuck way down in a gal's intestines, ya know what I'm sayin'?"

Angelo fell silent then, the signal cutting through the dark night and making all the men sigh with relief and start crawling out from whatever recesses they'd shoved themselves in.

"You wanna go get a drink after this?" Angelo suggested as he climbed nimbly down from the skids. Jack drug his frozen fingers along the back of his neck and willed himself to tell the man no, to tell him that he was busy, and then forget whatever fondness he felt for him. But Angelo Sabatino looked up at him with unguarded and almost childishly hopeful eyes, and Jack replied without thinking.

"Yeah, sure Angelo. We'll get a drink."

He tried to tell himself that he was just doing what Riley had told him to do, just getting closer to Angelo, just trying to find out more information that might help them take Johnny Sabatino down. But at this point, even he knew it wasn't totally the truth.

* * *

Angelo had a place over at the edge of the Narrows. A little one bedroom deal that was real cozy on the inside. Jack had spent a few nights there, mostly on nights when they played a game of poker with a couple other of Angelo's family members and Angelo got himself so drunk he could hardly walk. Jack usually hauled him into his bed on those nights and then passed out on the couch himself.

Despite the fact that they spent so much time together, Jack still hadn't figured Angelo out. Riley had told Jack of her suspicions, which she naturally thought were undoubtedly correct, about Angelo's sexuality. And yet, though Jack still noticed a definite discomfiture in Angelo's demeanor whenever rendezvousing with women was mentioned, he had definitely never shown any signs of liking men. Especially not of being attracted to Jack, which he was certain he would have noticed and put an end to immediately.

Besides, being chummy with Angelo Sabatino had its definite perks, the biggest being the poker games. Jack never got drunk at those games; he never got drunk. It made him too weak, too susceptible to lies or underhanded attacks. He liked being in control of himself, of situations, and being drunk stole that control away from him. He'd seen that enough with his father, and had even gotten a taste of it with that girl one night a long, long time ago, a little after they'd first met, when she'd asked him if he'd do it with her so she could know how it felt. He had agreed, pretending he'd done it all the time and it was nothing new to him. They were wasted after half a bottle of his father's liquor, split between them, but even that little amount didn't go unnoticed. His dad really roughed him up that night. But it was worth it, because he'd found out that day that when that girl got blotto she seemed to like to touch people. A lot.

The absence or presence of an alcohol clouded mind made every bit of difference at those poker games. Though Jack refused to drink, nobody else had any qualms about it. Much of the extended Sabatino family came in to play with Angelo, and it was clear to see how they loved him. He was joyful with them around, open and happy in a way that Jack rarely saw on him elsewhere. And the others were kind, diplomatic even, to anybody Angelo considered a friend. Without the alcohol in his system, Jack could sit back and observe the people who would cause he and Riley the most trouble if a full takeover was planned. After two drinks they were happy to share their opinions on the weather, politics (what little they knew of it), and Gotham City in general; after four they shared their opinions on rising drug and gas prices, the lack of good whores available, their problems with the missus', and where they bought their guns; after six Jack asked them about Johnny Sabatino and they ignored him; after seven he asked again, and that time, they talked.

They told him a lot of things. They told him that Johnny had no idea what he was doing most of the time. They told him that the rising drug prices weren't widespread but localized on their organization, their mob, because Johnny had such a bad temper hardly anybody wanted to work with him. They told him a new crime family was rising in influence, the Falcones, and that they were starting to stir up trouble, steal their dealers from them, intrude on their territory. They told him that the Rileys were unhappy with them for how Peyton Riley had been treated in their hands. They told him that though Sean Riley, Peyton's father, had struck the deal to smooth over mob relations, things were worse than ever, and it was all Johnny's fault. They told him that nobody, Sabatino or not, was sure if their next encounter with Johnny would be their last. He was foolish, shortsighted, supercilious. He needed to deflate his oversized head; step off that pedestal he'd put himself on; learn how to do business right.

He needed to be replaced.

And, at the end of the night, Jack went home with more than just his fair share of valuable information – due to his excellent poker face and lucid mind, he won nearly every round. And those men, those mobsters, did not play for chump change. Jack walked away from those games with thousands of dollars at a time.

But despite the metaphorical buckets of information he was hauling back to the Riley warehouse, neither he nor Peyton Riley could figure out just what to _do_ with it all. They had everything they needed, everything was in place, but it was there, at that point, that they hit a brick wall. It was clear that the inner foundations of the Sabatino crime family were already shaky and unstable, ready to crumble at the first bit of pressure, and yet where exactly the blow should fall was still being debated.

"You have to spend less time with the Sabatinos and more time with the thugs; they'll need to be won over as well. If Johnny suspects and gets them on his side . . ." she would say to him.

"I can't be two places at once, can I?" he would respond tartly.

And they would go on like that, a vicious circle that resulted in no positive answers but only more questions, more speculations.

But though they didn't realize it, their search, like the biting cold of winter, was drawing to a close.

* * *

**A/N: **I haven't given up on this story. In fact, I think that after this things are going to be more-or-less back on track, update-wise. That whole community nonsense is done and over with, but if it wasn't for you reviewers this chapter would never have been posted and I would have wallowed forever. The amount of support I got was staggering, and I NEVER expected such overwhelming encouragement. Thanks especially to all my new readers/reviewers, who decided to give this story a chance and actually liked it! You all kick so much ass it almost brings me to tears. If I was more of a crier, it totally would.

Anyway, this chapter was, in terms of donuts, all custard/jelly and no delicious glaze-y goodness. A.K.A – filler chapter. Had to explore Angleo Sabatino a bit more. A bit of a disappointment I think.

Anyway, I promised this FOREVER ago, but below are the links to how I picture both Peyton Riley and Johnny Sabatino. P.S **Imogen Kain **– stop reading my mind! Scarlett Johansson was_ almost_ the visual representation I chose. Her body is PERFECT for the comic book Peyton Riley. Sadly, I couldn't find a look that quite rivaled this one:

**http:/ images. starpulse . com / Photos / Previews /**** Hilarie-Burton-ot05. jpg**

It's funny because she plays a girl named Peyton (Payton?) in _One Tree Hill_. But anyway, she looks like she's plotting to kill her husband or some crazy shit like that, which is why that picture seemed perfect.

And as for Johnny . . . .

**http:/ 2. media . tumblr . com/ tumblr_koptg1fqF91qzoaqio1_500 .** jpg

Anyway, I hope they work. Just copy and paste and erase the added spaces!

Oh, and the reference to the drug mules is actually real and way more terrifying than Angelo Sabatino played it off to be. To watch an extremely interesting movie on the experience of a young mule check out _Maria Full of Grace._ It's in Spanish but you can always put on the English subtitles.

And tell me what you think of everything!


	14. Chapter 14

Jack knew, somewhere in the deep recesses of his mind, that it was only a matter of time before he was found out by that girl. He chose not to think about what would happen when that time came, telling himself firmly that she would invariably be left in the dark for as long as he so chose her to be. This was a dash of egoism on his part, thinking he could suppress the knowledge from her. After all, she wasn't stupid. And she was far too nosey and stubborn for her own good.

Still, how the big reveal came about was surprising to him. He would sometimes wonder about what her reaction might be, if she were to find out about him. Furious, impassioned anger, perhaps? Or maybe she would break down and cry for him, for his soul. Or maybe she would cut all ties, call him a monster, and turn her back on him forever . . . It became almost imperative, after he thought this latter option, that all traces of his involvement with the mob be hidden.

But nothing stays hidden forever.

He'd spent a night over at Angelo's place, playing poker late into the night and trying his best to work the idea of an overthrow into the mobsters' heads, so slowly that even if they looked back to reflect upon it they would have no idea how the idea first blossomed up in their brains. At least, that was Jack's aim. Insofar he'd had only minimal success. Even Angelo, when the topic was broached, refused to speak much about the subject.

Angelo, who Jack oftentimes had to haul into his bed, he was so inebriated, would merely laugh drunkenly whenever Jack brought up the idea that perhaps Cousin This-Or-That might be a better fit to run the family business. Angelo did not respond to the hints of more money that a takeover could bring, nor an increase in power, influence, nor the acquirement of good drugs and company. Nothing Jack could come up with was able to turn forgetful and unthreatening Angelo Sabatino, the laughing stock of the mob, from his loyalties. Jack had only had one positive indication that Angelo even listened to these tiny implications, and he still had no idea what to make of it.

"You worry too much, y'know that, Jay?" Angelo had slurred at him one night in early March, reaching out to grip Jack's shoulder, his dark eyes filmy and unfocused. "Always frownin'. You ever smile? Huh? I'm gonna find'a way to make you smile . . ."

"I'm just trying to look at the best interest of the mob. As a whole." Jack had responded shortly, uninterested in the meaningless mumbling of a drunk man who didn't want to discuss what Jack wanted to discuss.

"Ah! The mob! Fuck the goddamn mob . . . It ain't . . . _nothin'._" Jack had darted forward just in time to keep Angelo from rolling straight off of his mattress again. "Whoa . . . Thanks. See, this . . . this is all a man really needs."

Angelo had gestured around his cramped but comfortable little room with a dramatic sweep of his long arms, smacking Jack across the chest and then choking back a laugh.

"Booze and a bedroom?" Jack had replied drily, to which Angelo had snorted and twisted himself up in his bed sheets, trying to sit upright.

"_Nooo_. A friend. Like me 'n you. You ain't need nothin' but a loyal friend 'n a good lady. Everythin' else . . ." Angelo had reached up and punched Jack lightly on his cheek, and then, as if all the energy had been sucked from his limbs in that single motion, dropped limply against his pillows and fairly disappeared underneath of his blankets. From beneath of the thick layer of fabric Jack had just been able to distinguish Angelo muttering something. "Men like John don't got that. . . . 'n they destroy themselves with no help needed . . . searchin' for things . . . they don't even know they need."

And with that last bit of frustratingly philosophical rambling, Angelo had drifted into a sleep so heavy not even repeated shaking could wake him.

That had been at least a week ago, and Angelo had said nothing more about Johnny Sabatino. He hardly spoke of his cousin, the man who trusted him more than any of his other family members, at all. Jack figured that it was a baffling display of family loyalty, though Jack had no idea why Angelo even bothered keeping that imbecile's secrets. Sometimes Jack got the feeling, from the slightest shifting of eyes or the twitch of a finger, that Angelo didn't necessarily even like Johnny. Yet he was still truehearted. Still tight-lipped. If it wasn't so damn frustrating it might have been admirable.

Jack was musing on this problem with a furrowed brow and a distinctive frown lining his face the Sunday morning he let himself back into his apartment. He explained his absences to that girl in a number of ways, mostly by telling her that he'd taken up an extra graveyard shift for the butcher's shop, staying out late and picking up the shipments of meat from the docks and making sure it got back all right. It also explained any mysterious, unexplained bloodstains found on his person.

That girl had always scowled when he told her this, mumbled something about 'working to death', and then went back to speaking in hushed tones with Lola, leaving Jack well enough alone. He liked this; even thought himself pretty clever for managing to pull the wool over her eyes for so long. He was ready this morning with a fresh story about some meat catastrophe he'd had to deal with which had kept him out all night.

What he was met with was a completely empty apartment. This in and of itself was irregular and alarming, considering the previous night had been a Saturday and that girl always slept over with Lola that day. She oftentimes snuck into Jack's room after his sister had passed out and slid into bed with him, pressing her body against his and encouraging his hands to explore, though never too far. That was how it always was, and Lola, whose feeble constitution usually had her sleeping well into the afternoon, should be in her bed. But she wasn't.

After trekking over to that girl's apartment and fishing a key out from the grimy lighting fixture just outside of the door and letting himself in, he quickly discovered that the only person in that girl's apartment on the early Sunday morning was her mother, laid out indolently on the couch with a needle still stuck in the soft flesh of her inner arm and a scarf tied like a tourniquet just above. She was still breathing, but seemed to be in that state of complete lethargy that overcame a person who shot up; she didn't even respond when Jack stood next to her, or when he carefully removed the needle and crushed it beneath of his foot.

Feeling more and more frantic about the whereabouts of both that girl and his sister, Jack went back to his apartment and sat, with his cell phone turned off so that no call could be made to disturb him, and waited. His mood fluctuated violently, and he was caught between extreme annoyance and even anger at the two of them for taking off without leaving any sort of indication as to where; and an anxiety so strong Jack felt almost breathless with it, and pulled at his hair until his scalp was raw.

He heard his sister's voice first, chirruping brightly but breathlessly as she made her way down the hallway, and then the slightly lower response that belonged to that girl. In a minute he was off of the couch he'd been alternately sitting on and pacing past and had whipped the door open, all anxiety gone. The two girls took a simultaneous step back, their smiles fading at the sight of his thunderous expression. They were both dressed nicely, that girl's hair done up with a pretty little bow and Lola in a muted purple scarf that unfortunately accented the sickly tone of her skin and left her looking like a large bruise.

"Where have you been?" Jack demanded furiously, stepping back and glaring until they both entered the apartment, that girl with a decided tread and a defiant shake of her head and Lola with a faltering step.

"I'm . . . . gonna go ta bed," Lola said as soon as she got inside, tearing off her scarf and scurrying to her room. As soon as her door slammed shut that girl ripped her bow out of her hair and threw it at his feet, fists clenching.

"Where have _I_ been? Where have _I_ been?" Before Jack could open his mouth to retort, her hand shot out and slapped him hard across the face, the force enough to leave him stunned. He blinked twice and faced her again, and he knew in that one glance that she finally knew. Her lips were pressed in a thin white line, her eyes burning with the sort of fire that could rival the scorching glare of Peyton Riley. So it was anger, then.

"How was picking up meat at the dock's last night, Jack?" she asked tightly. Her body shook where she stood, as if her frame was too delicate and slight to contain the anger that she felt. Like at any moment it'd burst out of her, shattering her body and anything it came in contact with. "Have some . . . little anecdote that you wanna share? Another _lie_ that you want to lay on me?"

Still uncertain as to where he stood, how much she knew, Jack stood back and waited for her next words, or maybe the next blow. When she didn't answer she just shook her head, her lip curling up into an expression of contempt. It was a look that he could hardly stand to see directed at him, coming from her.

"Yeah . . . no answer, huh? Because I think we all know that you weren't at the docks. You don't even work at the butcher's shop." She licked her lips and then stared up at him with an inscrutable expression. "You know, it's funny. Because yesterday afternoon I decided to go on down to the butcher's shop and pay you a little visit. I thought it'd be a sweet gesture. Going to see my guy at work. You can't _imagine_ how surprised I was when I walked in the store and came face to face with Frankie Yatz. And I bet you can guess what Frankie told me, can't you Jack?"

Still Jack said nothing, but he knew she didn't need him to. His words were unwelcome to her at this moment.

"He told me that you don't work down at that butcher's shop. He told me that you haven't worked there for months and months. That you haven't worked there since that week and a half that you went missing straight off the map. And you know what else? He told me that you haven't been to school since then, either." She laughed, running hands through her hair. He noted that the nails on her hands were almost bloody, they were so torn up. "God! God, how stupid can you be, huh? To believe a stupid – bastard – like you!"

With every word she swung at him, but the words were beginning to lose their shaking fury, their biting coldness; they were taking on a more tremulous bent, and with every unguarded blow to his chest and arms and face Jack heard her breath come harsher, until she was almost sobbing.

"And I believed you, I believed you because I _love_ you. Because I thought that after everything you've seen, after my mom, after the way your dad died . . . I thought that you had more sense. Even after Frankie told me that I still didn't want to believe it." She shook her head, wiping at her eyes. "No, even then I told myself that you'd _never_ do something so stupid. I told myself that you were way too smart, had way too much going for you . . . And then I came back here and I waited up for you, and I started thinking of all those nights you didn't come home. And the more I thought about it, the more it all made sense."

She dug into the pocket of the sweater she had on and pulled out a crumpled envelope that she thrust at Jack. A hospital bill for Lola's treatment, one he hadn't had the chance to open yet. One that was ripped open carelessly nonetheless.

"Fifteen thousand dollars, huh?" she was shaking so severely now that she had to wrap her arms around her body to keep herself from pulling apart at the seams. Her frenzied voice dipped low, until it was nothing more than a hush of rapid, bitter words. "Fifteen _thousand_ dollars away from her hospital bills since you disappeared. I was so impressed that you were working hard enough to keep the rent paid . . . to pay Wheeler what he needed, even. But now it all makes sense. You're no better than the rest of the trash in this place."

Her words hurt him. More than any blow she could deliver to his body, any blow anyone could ever deliver to him. His hand clenched around the envelope clutched in his hand, the anger that had been stewing inside of his blood since the minute he'd come home to find her and his sister gone coming to a boiling point.

"No _better_?" He thrust the hospital bill out in front of him, a wrinkled mass of white paper. "I'm like your mother, huh? My father?"

His harsh laugh that followed that sentence made her flinch, but only for a moment. "When I went looking for you this morning, I found your mom completely out of it, a needle still sticking out of her arm. Why d'you think she does what she does? For a sick little girl? For you? Or for those drugs? For herself?"

The sneer that twisted his features was drastic, ugly; he knew it and yet he couldn't repress it any more than he could keep himself from aching at the expression of disgust on her face.

"And my father. You know what he did with the money he made? Put it to Lola, maybe? Paid off _fifteen thousand_ dollars? No. No, as I remember it, he got himself so much booze that he drunk himself to death fifty feet away from our front door, and blew the rest of it on special services from your mother and whatever other gutter slut he stumbled across."

That girl looked away, her eyes red-rimmed and shining, though no tears streaked down across the pale expanse of her cheek. She looked too angry to speak; to make a retort that he knew she wished she could.

He spoke deliberately, the tenor of his voice trembling with emotion he didn't even know he felt. "I do what I have to do to make sure that my sister keeps on breathing. And if you weren't such a self-righteous hypocrite –"

"A self-righteous –!"

"Oh yeah, yeah, little Miss I'll-Get-On-My-Back-For-Money. You think that what you're so quick to suggest doing is any better than what I'm doing, huh? You think that just because _I_ kept you from spreading your legs to the highest bidder, that makes you better than me? Because I actually went through with my unthinkable solution and you didn't get your chance to?"

Jack dragged his hand over the back of his neck and took to pacing again, the furious energy inside of him demanding some sort of outlet. What she said was too true, too emotionally weighted, for him to want to hurt her, and yet it was still so unjustly and passionately stated that he felt nearly sick from the mingled shame and wrath he felt.

"You think turning tricks for a couple of city slickers even comes close to selling drugs to these people, Jack?" he faltered in his pacing, the meaning of her words reaching his brain very slowly. She didn't know. _She didn't know_. Not all of it, anyway. Not the most important parts, the parts that were chill her to the bone, if she found out. That just the other night he'd helped pull a dead body to the edge of the waterfront and dump the lifeless corpse over. She didn't know it all. He turned to look at her, as if to verify this for himself with keen observation. The first glance of her stricken and anxious face told him that it was so – she really didn't know he was involved in the mob. She thought he was nothing more than a run-of-the-mill drug dealer. "God, do you know what happens to those dealers every day? Five of them get fished out of the river a week! If you really cared about . . . about Lola . . . you would know better than to go off and get yourself killed! How will that help anyone? How will it help us when it's you they're fishing out next? When the last family she has doesn't come home?"

"Nothing is going to happen to me," Jack stated falsely. It wasn't something he could assure; he knew, had known the minute Peyton Riley locked eyes with him and asked him to work for her, that he might not get out of this alive. And yet he had gone along with it anyway. For his sister. For the girl standing in front of him with disappointed anguish in her eyes. There was no backing out now. "I do what I have to do for Lola. And you really have no say over this. I'm the only person she has left, I'm her guardian. So whatever I say is best for her, _is_."

Such an underhanded move to use, and yet there was no other definite way to end the conversation, or to strike her harder than to point out the fact that, despite appearances, she was not a part of the family she loved more than her own.

She paled, absorbing the finality of his words and the deliberate pain he'd inflicted upon her. For a moment Jack just watched her, down to the minutest flutter of her eyelashes against her cheekbones. Each line of despair and hurt that lined her face seemed to cut into his skin, tracing patterns of all the ways he'd disappointed her, would disappoint her still. If he was Dorian Grey, living his life full of sin and touched by no consequences, then she was his portrait, a thing of absolute beauty, marred irreversibly by his every indiscretion.

"Fine," she whispered tremulously, her voice rising in volume with every subsequent word. "Fine, since I mean so . . . little . . . to you, do what you want. Get yourself killed. See if I care when they're hauling your body out of the river! I won't shed one tear. I won't."

With one last defiant shake of her head she spun around and stormed out of his apartment, slamming her door behind her and leaving the framework of Jack's entire life shaking in her wake.

* * *

The answer to his problems, or perhaps the beginning of his downfall, came just as March entered its second week.

Jack and Angelo were situated at one long table in Johnny's warehouse, back from a night at the docks and with two hundred crates stacked and ready to be opened and examined. There were twenty other men working that night, at different tables than them. Two men would haul boxes to the ends of tables and then take a crowbar to the top of them, wrenching it off and tossing it to the side. It was then that the others unpacked the crates, most of them full of children's toys, and slit open whatever doll or teddy bear it was that held the drugs or ammunition being shipped in. After that there were men ready to take the drugs and deliver them, discreetly as possible, to dealers all of the Narrows and the City. Jack's specified load was to be delivered, coincidentally, on the edges of the Narrows, less than a block away from St. Katherine's.

He and Angelo were sorting out the drugs, counting and weighing the pellets and packages that almost single-handedly decayed the Narrows from the inside out. Johnny stood behind them, strolling leisurely between the tables and shouting at anybody who looked like they weren't moving fast enough, or who miscounted and had to go back and redo a crate. His voice was grating, raw, and Jack was beginning to hate it. Not quite to the point where he wished to take out his gun and whip it across Johnny's temple, but there was always time, and he was sure he'd get there eventually. It was clear that most of the people sitting at the tables already were.

The tension of the room was nearly at its breaking point, and Jack had his eye on one thug, a new boy, who looked just about ready to snap. He'd be killed immediately, of course. But at least the pressure hanging in the air would dissipate, replaced by morbid fascination and boiling anger. Things were always so much better when they broke; got past that troublesome crest and crashed violently to the shore.

It was then that a warehouse door was flung open, smashing against a wall with a metallic clanging that rung throughout the warehouse with blaring sharpness. Jack saw Angelo wince out of the corner of his eye, and the olive hand reached up to touch his scarred temple. Jack's heart skipped a beat when he saw Peyton Riley come storming into view, her blonde hair whipping out behind her as she strode into the room, her face a mask of absolute fury. Trailing behind her was another girl, much smaller than Peyton and in fishnets and a cheap Lycra mini-dress.

"Johnny!"

At the first sound of her voice, cracking like a whip through the warehouse, Angelo's hands shook so violently he slipped in the midst of cutting open a teddy bear, the pale glint of his knife flashing before slicing across the back of his hand. At the same time, Johnny turned around and grimaced in disgust at the approaching figure of his wife, oblivious to his cousin's misfortune.

"What the fuck d'you think you're doin' here?" Johnny demanded, and then gestured at the woman trailing behind. "And who the hell –"

"Fuck you!" Riley strode up to Johnny, standing almost directly in front of the table at which Jack and Angelo sat. "You know damn well what this is about . . ."

Angelo swore, crimson blood dripping down his fingers, shaking so severely the drops were splattering out across the tabletop, some of them landing on Jack's jeans. Jack stared at Angelo from the corner of his eye. His eyes were wide, glossy, and though his blood was streaming in steady rivulets down his hands they were focused not on his wound, but on Johnny and Peyton squaring off in front of him.

"How dare you bring this _slut_ back to our place, Johnny." Riley was fuming, her thinly boned hands clenched into white-knuckled fists at her side.

Jack, a design forming in his mind even as his limbs began to act, reached out and grabbed a cloth from down the table, wrapping it around Angelo's bleeding hand. The man's riveted eyes flickered down to where Jack bound up his wound, and as he gripped Angelo's wrist to wrap the cloth tight his fingertips pressed against Angelo's pulse – it was racing, the blood pumping furiously through his veins. A biological reaction that spoke for itself. Jack dropped Angelo's hand and the man looked away immediately, casting his guilty eyes to the ground, though the tension in his neck and shoulders indicated how very much he would like to feast them on the scene in front of him.

"I'm done," Riley breathed heavily, "with coming home and finding dirty whores in my house. Done with watching you go fuck around but slicing me across the chin if I even think . . ."

Johnny's hand shot out, and the smack was so on-point and heavy-handed that the blow echoed. Angelo twitched violently beside Jack; he was only just in time to push the Italian man back into his seat, mercifully unnoticed by anybody else. He was the only one who wasn't completely engrossed by the scene playing out in front of him. This development was shocking, unexpected. The dark eyes Jack had come to know so well were full of furious energy, anger, a bloodthirsty fire that Jack had never seen before. Jack was momentarily stymied; uncertain as to how to proceed.

"You don't got _no_ place to tell me what to do," Johnny growled viciously. "I do what I want, when I want. You gotta problem? Take it up with your God. Ain't nobody else gonna listen to your bitchin'."

She struck out violently, clawing at Johnny's face, neck, arms, anything she could reach on him. Her screams were almost inhuman, bursting out of her mouth like the attack call of some fearsome bird of prey. The men sitting around all sucked in a collective breath together, their eyes alight with interest, sparkling malevolently with a sort of untamed fascination. That look was timeless – Jack was certain it held the same glint so long ago, when thousands of spectators crowded into the Colosseum to watch a golden maned lion tear apart a couple of gladiators, or even hundreds of innocent Christians.

So taken aback was Jack by this shocking lack of control on Riley's part, he didn't notice Angelo leaving his chair until it was far too late to reach out and pull him back. The lean Italian had already thrown himself across the table, scattering drug pellets and the gutted skins of formerly stuffed animals onto the floor. Jack reached into his jacket almost reflexively, wrapping his hand around the butt of his gun as if to pull it out and aim it – but what was he doing? Protecting Angelo was not his goal. That was not why he was here. It was for Lola. For his girl. For himself. Nobody else.

With considerably reluctance, Jack removed his hand from his jacket and laid both palms flat on the table in front of him, as if to keep an eye on his limbs – make sure they didn't make such a dangerous move when somebody could see it and make him pay.

Angelo had his arms wrapped around Peyton Riley's waist and was hauling her away, her arms still flailing, still reaching out to claw the eyes out of the man in front of her, shrieking, sobbing, screaming hoarsely over and over, "I hate you, I _hate_ you, you bastard, you fucking bastard", until each word was raw. It almost seemed as if her hate had scorched her throat.

Johnny reached into his own jacket and pulled out his revolver, cocking it and pointing it directly at Angelo's back.

"Put her down, Angelo! That rabid bitch has insulted me for the _last_ time!"

Angelo dropped Peyton rather unceremoniously, and the blonde hurtled herself at his back, trying desperately to push her way past his rigid and immovable form to get to the man who had a weapon out and ready to fire.

"Do it, Johnny! Do it! Kill me! Put a bullet in my head and prove to everyone that you're just as fucking _worthless_ as they all thought! Poor Johnny, can't do nothing right, can't even manage to keep his wife in check, huh? But you won't ever be able to do that, because I won't ever give in to you, not ever!"

"Get the fuck outta my way, Angelo!" Johnny shouted, spit flying from his mouth, chest heaving. His face was red with mortification.

"Just calm down, huh? Why you wanna go shootin' each other anyway?" Angelo demanded breathlessly, still restraining Riley, blood leaking through the cloth wrapped around his hand and smearing across her bare arms as she tried to claw her way past him. "You know what Sean Riley would do to ya if he found his baby girl shot in the head, John? You know? He'd get every fuckin' Irish in this city to come burn us alive in our beds. I dunno about you gents, but I kinda like living. I wanna keep on doin' it."

There was a murmur of assent, worried glances exchanged between neighbors, and Jack felt the tension in his body relax. Angelo was doing what he did best – speaking calmly, rationally, despite the anger that Jack knew filled him currently, despite the fact that he was so close to Riley, who was the cause of every tremble Jack had ever seen pass through him.

Because the reaction Jack had observed in Angelo – his racing pulse, the dilated eyes, the trembling – told him everything he'd never known until this day. It filled in every gap so perfectly that Jack was amazed he'd never guessed at it sooner, and yet at the same time he couldn't believe it was true, even after the obviousness of it was staring him in the face.

Angelo Sabatino was in love with Peyton Riley.

All at once, Jack saw his path laid out flat in front of him, a golden brick road ending in a magnificent emerald city, his for the pillaging. Here was his answer, the one he'd been searching for.

After working his jaw furiously in agitation, the veins and tendons standing out starkly in his neck, Johnny finally dropped his gun and turned to spit viciously on the ground, as if ridding himself of the longing for the kill he felt. His coal-black eyes fell immediately upon Jack.

"You! Take this bitch and get her the fuck outta my warehouse." He jabbed a finger in Jack's direction and then motioned for Angelo to release Riley, which he did, reluctantly.

"I can take her, Johnny . . ." Angelo began, casting his shifting, excited eyes back to the heavily breathing blonde.

"No. No, you and me are gonna have a little talk, Angelo." The silence that settled over the men was deafening, and once again Jack itched to reach for his gun. Nobody who Johnny had requested a "talk" with had come out of it alive. Even Riley sensed the shadow hanging over Angelo, and she ceased in her struggles completely, backing away from him and leaving him facing Johnny quite alone.

But Angelo's eyes held no fear, and he merely shrugged. "All right, then."

Riley, uninterested in the fate of any Sabatino, turned and swept past Jack without so much as looking at him. As loath as he was to leave Angelo awaiting near certain death, there was very little he could do. Unless he wanted to pull out his revolver and shoot him now . . . Jack faltered in his retreat, staring at Johnny's rigid back. It would be so easy . . . he wouldn't even suspect it.

From over Johnny's shoulder, Jack's eyes met with Angelo's. There was the smallest shifting of the head in either direction, the tightening of his lips, and in that instant Jack knew that Angelo had seen right through him. Without faltering for another instant, Jack turned and left.

Riley was waiting for him in the alley out behind the warehouse, leaning up against the side of a grimy building, heedless of the expensive silk blouse she wore. The lines of her face were taut with an emotion Jack had never seen on her face before, her eyes lined with the sort of mad grief that only the emotionally fortified could possess. Anybody less resilient than she would have crumpled with such emotion coursing through their bodies. It was painfully apparent that whatever had happened that night had been a breaking point for Peyton Riley – perhaps it was seeing the slut in her home, as she said, or maybe it was more than that. He didn't necessarily care. He only knew that she had jeopardized their entire plan with her temper tantrum, and that Angelo Sabatino, who could very well be of immense use to them, was unlikely to be breathing for much longer.

"_What_ is your problem?" Riley looked away and then shook her head sulkily. "You realize that you almost just got yourself killed, don't you? Where would that leave me, huh?"

"Working for my spineless bastard of a husband. Probably become his best friend, right Jay? I mean, you've already gotten chummy with all the other big hands. Angelo, Beppe, Gino . . . it goes on and on, doesn't it?" She threw back her head and laughed loudly, the shrillness of it jarring Jack's nerves to the point where he had to reach out and cover her mouth with his hand.

"You listen to me," he hissed into her ear, "I haven't sold my soul to this organization to have it all ruined by some spoiled rich girl's time of the month . . ."

Riley made a sound of indignant anger but Jack pushed her hard against the building she'd been leaning against. He heard the fabric of her slacks scraping against the rough bricks and hoped that she could feel it tearing at her skin, as well.

"Shut _up_. I have way too much on the line, here. My girl can't even_ look_ at me anymore because of what I'm doing. And she might not know everything, but it's close enough. The only thing keeping me from strangling you with my bare hands and then making a run for it is the money – you know I need it. I need it more than you need your petty, pointless revenge. And that means I need you, because without your two thousand a month . . . . So either you shape up and keep that fat mouth _closed_ –" his fingernails bit into the flesh of her cheek to emphasize this point, "or I go straight to Johnny and hand him a real reason to kill off his ultimate pain in the ass. You think he'll shoot me, too, if I turned you in? I bet I've got enough sway to get out of it, by now."

Riley's hot breath streamed out of her nostrils and across the back of Jack's hand, still covered with Angelo's blood from where the man had cut himself. He wondered if he was still alive. He had heard no gunshot, but that meant very little where Johnny Sabatino was concerned. It could very well be that he was just biding his time. Perhaps he'd used a knife, instead, to keep things quiet.

Taking advantage of the preoccupation of his thoughts, Riley knocked his hand away from her mouth and stared up at him with hellfire in her eyes, working her jaw. He felt pleased at having caused her even a small amount of discomfort or pain. She deserved it, after such a display.

"That's enough. I don't need some boy from the slums lecturing me about my attitude, all right? I lost it. It won't happen again."

"It –"

From behind, somewhere in the darkness of the alley, there was a crunch of gravel and the rustling of fabric against fabric that indicated an approach. Riley tensed and stepped behind Jack, her breath coming out in a low hiss, "Your gun, get out your fucking gun!"

Without allowing himself time to think, Jack reached into his jacket and pulled out his weapon, aiming it into the darkness and waiting for the approach with a racing pulse. He was determined that he would not die tonight – if he had to kill fifteen people to get back home, he would. He had more to do, yet. He couldn't leave Lola so sick, couldn't leave the bills with so little paid off, couldn't let things between him and that girl end on such a bad note . . . And they had never . . . His hands tightened around his gun and his aim steadied, his whole body leaning into the shot he knew he would have to make.

From the darkness a tall, familiar shape came into view, his hands hanging at his side. The ghostly light streaming from one highly perched and shrouded window fell across Angelo, illuminating the right side of his face. His scar made him look even more disfigured, barely human.

"You gonna shoot me, Jay?" Angelo asked softly, but he didn't need to seek reassurance. At the first sight of his friend, Jack had lowered his weapon. The relief washed through him and left him rather breathless and lightheaded.

"Nah, of course I'm not." Jack chuckled, swearing to himself that as soon as he got home he would make things right with that girl, tell her he was sorry, kiss her, hold her. She should know what she meant to him, and he was so horrible at letting her see it, feel it . . . "You just . . . You . . . You feeling all right, Angelo?"

From behind him, Riley reached out and gripped at his arm, her nails pinching into his skin. Her display of uneasiness was warranted. Jack wasn't accustomed to the look of jealousy on another man's face, but he was so well-versed with it on himself that he recognized the acidic gaze immediately. All at once Angelo was no longer his friend; he was Johnny Sabatino's cousin, his confidante, and he was, above all, a dangerous mobster who thought that Jack was fooling around with the girl he was in love with.

The smile that spread across Angelo's face was twisted, more like a snarl than a grin. "Sure . . . yeah, sure. 'Course. I didn't know I was interruptin' somethin'. My 'pologies . . ."

With the quickness and composure that she possessed in amazing quantities, Riley let out a derisive snort and pushed at Jack, striding past him with her head held high and her posture haughty.

"Please! This asshole was just wasting my time. I thought you might be my husband, come back to finish me off, so I ordered him to get out his gun. My car should be out front still."

She strode away, flinging one last glance back at Jack. It spoke for itself: _Watch your back_.

The echoes of her footsteps had only just faded when Angelo hurled himself at Jack, catching him completely off guard. They went flying backwards, Jack sliding against cracked concrete, his head hitting the pavement with a sickening snap. The world swam around him, and he was only just aware of Angelo straddling him, his fist raised, and then –

The world went dark, spinning, and Jack was aware of a staggering pain in his jaw and lip. There was no time for him to blink reality back into focus before the next fist hit him, this blow falling on his nose. And another, just as the blood started dripping from his nostrils, and this one got him right in the eye. Another, another, another, following up the first few. The beating was hard, unexpected, and yet familiar. It had been a long time since Jack had been knocked around like this, an eternity since his father had held him to the ground in just this way and let the blows rain down on him, but Jack supposed that you never did lose the hang of it. He was more than ready to take more, and to even regain his focus and throw the man off of him to get some punches of his own in, when suddenly they stopped.

Angelo's hands gripped at the front of his shirt and pulled his face up close to his own, his lips twisted furiously. Jack's head was swimming, eyesight unfocused to the point where the scar on Angelo's face distorted and stretched until it looked as though it went across the entire expanse of his forehead, and then dipped back down low across his cheek. The hands gripping his shirtfront clenched spasmodically and he felt himself being shaken, until even the world shook itself straight, and Jack could see again.

"How long?" Angelo was demanding in a strangled voice. "How long have you been fuckin' her?"

His voice was like liquid in his mouth. But no, that was just his blood. He coughed and it spilled out over his lips, and for a moment he was stunned by it, by the nostalgic feeling that the salty warmth that flowed down his chin produced. How many days had passed since he'd seen this same sight on Lola? He wasn't certain. It all blurred together.

"Never," Jack said, shaking his head. "I'm not –"

The next punch caught him on the temple and lit a fire along his skull, all the way back to that aching collision point at the back of his head. Black spots danced across his vision.

"You're lying!" Angelo half-sobbed, shaking Jack back into focus yet again. "I saw you . . . saw you pressed up against her like . . . like . . ."

Before Angelo could finish his sentence, Jack took the opportunity to swing out and strike the man across the scarred side of his face. Angelo crumpled to the side immediately, and Jack, with a feeling of absolute self-loathing rising up inside of him for carrying out such a move, stumbled his way up into a standing position, his head still swimming. Angelo clutched at his head and Jack felt another rush of pity – that side of his skull was tender from where the rudder had split his head wide open during his boating accident. It was why he'd aimed for it.

"Heard you whisperin'," Angelo went on, still cradling his head in his hands, and Jack was horrified to see that actual tears were streaking their way down the man's cheeks. "And when I came you jumped apart. 'Cuz you were afraid of gettin' caught, huh? How long?"

"Calm down, Angelo," Jack told him, dabbing at his streaming nose with the tail of his shirt. His voice was nasally and unlike his own, but after a brief examination he was willing to bet that his nose wasn't broken.

"You shut the fuck up!" The force of his words made the man tip over in the midst of standing, and Jack had to rush forward to catch him before he toppled. He got a savage punch to the gut for his troubles, and he doubled over immediately, gasping for breath. Blood and spit dangled from his lips in long strands. "Years and years I've been in love with her and she ain't never even looked my way. At first it was 'cuz she didn't know me, and then I thought that maybe it was just 'cuz she was a married woman 'n she was too good for that. But _now_ . . . she chooses _you_ . . ."

"She hasn't chosen anyone!" Jack shouted, wiping at his mouth. Even his voice was bloody. "There's nothing going on between us!"

"Liar . . ."

"I have my own girl, Angelo. You know that, huh?" His head hurt and he was agitated, too tired to deal with the jealous beatings of a hopeless romantic. "I don't need anyone else but her. You come at me again and I swear I'll shoot you. I don't feel like dying tonight."

He bent down and retrieved his gun from where it had slid. Angelo spun on the spot, his hand still pressed against the side of his face and his eyes wide and glossy. He looked lost, wilted, the anger drained from him, and once again Jack felt the sort of pity he'd never felt for anybody else, except for perhaps his sick baby sister.

"Aw shit . . . shit . . ." Angelo murmured, pressing his palm against the right side of his face and wincing. "I ain't gonna kill you, Jay . . . I lost my head."

"Obviously."

"I just . . . it's not your fault if you're sleepin' with her. I would too, if she offered. I was just jealous . . ."

"I'm not."

"But why'd you have to go hit me on the bad side of my head, huh? I think I just lost two years of my life that I ain't never gonna get back . . . Can't even remember my sixth birthday, now."

"Neither do I, get over it." After a few seconds' worth of haggard breathing and silence, Jack rolled his eyes and lowered his gun. "Fine. I'm sorry I hit you in your head, Angelo. You're sorry you remodeled my face. Let's just both go home."

Jack turned and made his way unsteadily down the alley, his head spinning with each step. He heard Angelo's faltering but nimble steps approach from behind him.

"I can't remember where I live," Angelo confessed sullenly.

The moonlight hit Jack's face and stung his aching eyes, foreshadowing a whole mess of pain for the morning light he could expect in a couple of hours. He winced in annoyance, and the first thing that came to mind was the oath he heard so often, more often than not directed at him.

"Jesus Christ, Angelo . . ."

But Jack helped him home anyway, for reasons he could not understand, but still despised.

* * *

That night when he let himself into his apartment he found that girl curled up in his bed. It was clear from the first soothing touch she laid against his swollen cheek that she'd been doing some thinking, too. He wasn't the only one who had determined to set things right.

* * *

**A/N:** Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me . . . . In honor of another year of my life I give you another chapter! Originally I would have posted this tomorrow, but all the official birthday shenanigans are going down on that day, so I'll be too busy to post.

Not particularly happy with this one. I dunno. I felt like scrapping it and starting over again about eighty times, but decided to get feedback from you guys before I did that. So tell me – is it as "ick" as I believe it to be? What do you guys think about this development concerning Angelo – any new theories forming?

There'll be about . . . five or six more chapters to the first part of this story, so we're wearing down. I know it's taking FOREVER. Part two, as you all know, brings in the Joker as we know him from the movie. Or, as close to it as I can possibly get, anyway. : )

Once again you guys blow my mind. I'll be posting a list recognizing all my reviewers next chapter, probably. I love you all!

Xx

~B


	15. Chapter 15

"You look awful."

It was hard to blink. One eye seemed to be almost completely swollen shut. In the back of his mind, somewhere behind the agitation and annoyance he felt at that stupid Wop for busting him up like this, he had to admire Angelo's strength. And he couldn't blame him, really. Had it been reversed . . . if it had been Angelo pressed up against that girl, whispering things he couldn't hear and then displaying the typical signs of a guilty conscious once caught . . . Jack probably wouldn't have stopped punching until the other man was visibly dead.

So he couldn't blame Angelo for doing what he did. But admitting that didn't make it feel any better.

"Really?" Jack murmured, running a hand over his face and taking inventory of the full extent of damage caused. His whole head felt like a mass of throbbing pus, so going on feeling alone obviously wouldn't get him accurate results. The right side of his face was swollen, his eye bruised and his lip split – the source of his bloody mouth, the night before. His nose ached dully, a throbbing pain which mirrored the back of his head, where it had hit the pavement. It was familiar. Like all the years between his father's death had been erased. His dad could be just outside of the door, resting his head on their kitchen table and groaning about a hangover.

"What happened?"

Her voice was just low enough to escape being rankling. It was odd to have her lying next to him, her hair tousled from sleep and her clothes rumpled. He'd never woken up to anybody before. And though the night had been spent in a purely G-rated way, with her running tender, apologetic fingers across his skin as he succumbed to exhaustion, it was still so . . . nice. Calming. Peaceful. Like they'd erased a thousand arguments and icy glares with that one night spent tangled in each other's arms. An understanding had somehow been constructed between them, bridging the great chasm of divide that had been pushing them apart for so long.

"Oh you know, just . . ." A lie was on the tip of his tongue, struggling to spring out into the open air and hang above them, rotting the wood of the bridge they'd so recently built. He swallowed, and it slid thickly back into the recesses of his sarcastic soul. "Had a misunderstanding with a friend."

"A friend?" she asked, and then checked the surprise in her voice immediately. "I mean . . . what sort of argument was it?"

Jack smiled, the motion sending sharp, splitting pain through his lip and cheek. "Don't think I didn't catch that. It's not so crazy that I have a friend. _You_ found me interesting enough to hang around for years. I've just got that . . . charismatic charm."

He tried to smile wider, in a swaggering, playboy sort of way, but found the action nearly impossible – the blood that still caked his lip was dried and stiff, preventing such movement. That girl choked back a laugh as he winced with discomfort.

"So tell me about this friend of yours. Should I worry about being replaced?"

"Unless he gets a whole lot prettier real fast . . . no." The bedsprings creaked as Jack shifted uncomfortably. "I'm not even sure why I like him. He's a complete moron most of the time. Doesn't listen to anything I say, gets so drunk every other night that he can hardly walk, gambles too much, smokes too much, swears too much. And his memory is horrible. He got into an accident, and he can't remember a thing. I - I could look him straight in the eye and say 'Angelo, if you forget this address you'll die', and he'd still forget that he was supposed to remember it, and what for."

That girl bit her lip to hold back her smile. She spoke teasingly, one finger reaching out to entwine itself around a loose strand of his hair. "Mhmm. Entirely incorrigible. Kinda like a friend of mine I have . . ." Jack shot her a one-eyed glare. "All right, all right. So why stick around, then, if this guy is so annoying and beats you to a pulp on top of it?"

Jack thought deeply about this. It wasn't the first time he'd done so, and so far he'd only come up with a feeling in his gut that he couldn't quite name but which felt familiar. The same sort of pity he felt when he watched Angelo cradling his injured head in his spidery fingers; the same respect whenever the man exhibited strong character despite his shortcomings and flaws; the same fascination whenever he displayed almost child-like joy or trust in a thing or a person. The world had been cruel to him, had taken away every chance he'd ever had of being normal in an instant, and yet it almost seemed as though his accident had actually _cured_ him. Cured him from the sin, the degeneracy, the monotonous conformity of everyday life that would have set upon him had he walked out of that boating incident a whole man. And, with the dawning of realization fresh upon him, Jack finally found his answer as to why Angelo Sabatino was worth knowing.

"He reminds me of Lola. To an extent. Except stronger. Because he's still here, still firmly living, while she's . . ." He cleared his throat uncomfortably. "It's like this place hasn't touched him. Like he's still . . . clean."

That girl was silent after he answered, and he had a feeling that she was doing some of her own pondering. He awaited some sort of further questioning on the subject, but the only response he got was a very languid and cat-like stretch, her body tensing and flexing while draped across him. The bed was too small for her to lay out beside him, but he liked it better this way.

"You should really move into the room next to Lola's," she observed. "I'm sure you have money to buy yourself a bed . . ."

The slight disapproval in her voice was there, but Jack ignored it. He figured that it couldn't be helped, and it was good enough for him that she had decided to look past his taking part in a profession she found abhorrent. If the situations had been reversed, and it was her bringing in ten thousand dollars in a way he didn't like . . . But this was just another example of how good she was. How intrinsically pure and forgiving.

Her suggestion was one he'd thought about briefly, and only once, and when he responded he used the same answer which he'd given himself, which was completely unarguable.

"I'm not sleeping in a room previously occupied by three of the most worthless human beings I've ever had the misfortune to be exposed to."

Silence fell on them for a few moments, the pale darkness blanketing them with no interruption. And then her fingers trailed over his chest and she said, "You know . . . . if you hadn't been 'exposed' to two of them, you wouldn't even exist right now. So see, they weren't entirely worthless."

"Well actually, _that_ . . . is completely subject to opinion. Depends on who you ask."

His tiny cot shifted as she did, creaking with even the slightest movement. A soft and fluttering breath tickled his ear and the nape of his neck; a cool summer breeze that had somehow tiptoed its way into the seventh circle of Hell.

"I'm grateful for every mistake they ever made. Because each and every one of them led you straight to me."

He closed his eyes and tried to hold onto those words, let them resonate in his mind until they were etched permanently on the inside of his skull.

"Where would I be without you, Jack?"

Again he wanted to answer, and again he swallowed down the bitter response. His self-deprecation was something that she didn't need to be exposed to, was something that had so often pulled them apart. But he wouldn't let it happen now. Not when things, for a few hours, were perfect again.

Still, he could hear it in his own soul, hissing like a snake, whispering the answer to him. Where would she be without him?

_Better off_.

* * *

Jack shrugged his jacket off of him and plucked at his sweat-soaked shirt with disgust. The warm weather had come on unexpectedly, a gentle heat that struck out and had Jack dripping with sweat in his thick overcoat by the time he'd reached the Riley warehouse and found it safe to remove the article of clothing which held his protection.

"Gotta find a better way to carry your gun, Jay," Riley mused, looking up at him with a wrinkled nose. "Jesus, Witless really roughed you up, didn't he?"

"Yeah, well, I needed it. Been off my game. This," he made a grand gesture towards his beaten face, "will remind me to watch my back a little better." He swung himself over the back of a couch and sprawled out across the cushions, ignoring the protestation his bruises raised at such rambunctious movements. "Wanna know why your, uh, cousin-in-law got so hot under the collar about finding us together?"

Riley sat back in her chair and scanned the expression on his face. No doubt she found it more difficult than usual, even, considering it was such an absolute mess of dark bruises and inflamed skin. "He works for Johnny, that's all the reason I need. They're all brutes. You found that out the hard way. Is my life – your life – in danger?"

"I doubt it," Jack answered apathetically. "And you're wrong, by the way. Angelo attacked me because he saw me with you, and he thought that there was something _scandalous_ going on. Ha! Go figure, right? Anyway, he was jealous."

Riley jumped, her cool countenance shattered. "What?"

"My boy's in love with you." Jack smirked at the open-mouthed wonder etched across Riley's normally composed face. He relished any time when he had one over on her. "Insanely. You know what this means, right? Besides the fact that you were blatantly wrong about his sexual preference."

"That I'm the unluckiest bitch that's ever lived on this worthless planet?" Riley groused, dropping her head into her hands. "Goddammit! As if one stinking Italian on my case wasn't enough!"

"While I won't dispute the '_bitch_' part of what you just said, you're wrong about being unlucky. Angelo loving you is what we've been waiting for. The, uh,_ key_ to taking Johnny out of power. Are you getting this?"

"No, I really don't. How does some scarred idiot lusting after me –"

"You ever been in love, Peyton?" Jack asked abruptly, cutting off the spewing of 'poor-me's that was sure to present itself shortly. Riley froze in the middle of a word, her lips parted and her face pale. Jack smirked. "Yeah, I think you have. You've taken a lot of . . . pains . . . to track me down and figure me out. Bet you didn't think I was scoping you out, too? Peyton Riley, Miss Invincible, husband hater and tough-as-nails mob daughter. . . But you're no different than anybody else. So . . .Who was he? Hm? The guy you were engaged to before Daddy Dearest took him out and forced you to marry Johnny?"

Peyton stood, towering over Jack as he lay languidly across the couch. He smiled up at her, unintimidated. This . . . this was beautiful. Payback was always so sweet.

"I don't know what you're talking about . . ." she hissed down at him, her face a stormy cloud amidst the halo of golden sunlight that was her hair.

"Oh, I think you do. I'm smarter than you give me credit for, Peyton. I can read people. That's why you picked me . . . remember?" Jack swung his legs over the edge of the couch and sat up straight, cracking his knuckles as he did so, adding dramatic hand gestures to his words. "So, Mr. Peyton Riley got in the way of Daddy's plans for a . . . united mob. A mob where all the murderous villains shook hands and killed harmoniously, and then skipped through a meadow of tulips and butterflies. Lover Boy had to be removed from the picture. But I bet Peyton's Plaything put up a fight, didn't he? And I'm willing to bet Daddy didn't like that . . . Not at _all_. Your man was getting in the way of progress. Of a better, more _efficient_ Gotham. Hm? So either he killed your darling husband-to-be, or he roughed him up enough that he wouldn't ever come back. At least, not until it was too late."

The woman in front of him was trembling with her indignance. Behind his exultation and smugness Jack wondered at how drastically losing love could change a person. Had she been kind, before she lost that man of hers? Had she been happy, or always smiling, or perhaps soft and gentle? It was incredible that the absence of one person, one out of millions in this city alone, could forever damage the psyche of a human so badly that they never quite got over it, never recovered. Would it be that way for him, if he ever lost that girl? Would his humanity, like Peyton's, desert him? Get lost somewhere between the grief and the rage and leave him irreparably altered? It was hard to imagine such a circumstance, even when an example stood directly in front of him, reacting so gratifyingly to his taunts.

"Who told you this? Who –"

"_You_ did! Don't you remember?" Jack rubbed his hands together in glee as he readied himself to explain. "You didn't need to say anything outright, of course. I'm better than that. I got all I needed to know from the very first time you invited me here. You offered me a drink, remember? You mentioned your favorite wine, the wine you were saving for Johnny's funeral . . . the last of a bottle you opened to celebrate your engagement."

Peyton sucked in a breath of air through clenched teeth, her eyes wide and wild.

"'Course, you couldn't have been talking about your engagement to _Johnny_. Who would celebrate _that_? Not you. No. So that, paired with that self-pitying, wounded animal expression that you get on your face during times of, uh, weakness, told me all I needed to know. I crafted a pretty little story, using the most probable explanation available, and uh . . . well, you've gone and proved my theory right, haven't you?"

With a grin to add a final flourish to his narrative, Jack let his body sprawl backwards on the couch, stretching out his aching limbs. It felt good to let the pain wash over him again, let it rip through his tissues; to hear his muscles protest and ignore it willingly, because he had that control, that choice.

Riley stewed, her entire body quaking with anger. And yet, she had no response for what he'd just told her.

"So now we're even. You know dirt on me and I know dirt on you. And you can't go pretending like you don't know what love can do for you, if you know how to use it . . . Angelo will do anything for you. To get noticed, to earn your respect, to have you just glance his way once, even. It'll be too easy to finish what we've started, with him on our side. Just think of the possibilities, Peyton. Think of all we could do with the pliant heart of a Sabatino mobster served to you on a silver platter."

And he knew she would. He just didn't know how much.

* * *

There were times when Angelo's poker games got out of hand.

Not just when the men go uproariously drunk, and, more often than not in those situations, violent. Booze brought out the very worst of the men, and you couldn't have the very worst without whores being involved in some way. And then the poker turned into little less than a drunken orgy, men sneaking off into corners of the apartment to get blown or have a quick lay, spending their earnings in ten minutes at the most. Jack hated those sort of nights, because they were so unrelentingly _useless. _It was one night of sly hints wasted; one night when he wouldn't be cheating the Italians out of everything they had in their pockets; one night where he watched scantily clad women with tousled hair and smeared lipstick walk out of the door with what should have been _his_ money. Money for his sister.

He hadn't even wanted to come that night. Angelo was still angry with him, though it was in a manner that was far more dangerous than the way he'd tackled him and beat him the night he'd found Riley and him together. This anger was cloaked with chilly smiles and the assurance that everything was "all good". This anger stewed, and Jack could see it staring back him sometimes, after catching the Italian watching him for long moments. Angelo may be brainless on a good day, but he used to be a dangerous man – no different from any other Sabatino who could plot and kill so flawlessly, because it was their job, and they were good at it. Jack got the feeling that the score had not been settled between them just yet. He wasn't even sure if Angelo didn't have half a mind to kill him.

It was one of those useless nights, and Jack took note of that the minute he stepped into the door. There were already four girls lolling around, skirts hitched up to the very highest portions of their thighs, revealing swatches of brightly colored or lacy undergarments, or sometimes nothing at all. The poker game had already been abandoned, and Angelo was nowhere to be seen.

"Jay, look what we have for ya!" Beppe Artuso, the husband of one of Johnny's female cousins, swayed over to him drunkenly. On his arm dangled a buxom blonde. She fluttered thickly coated eyelashes Jack's way and eyed his pocket, which was bulging with money he had planned to put down in the game. "A real angel, huh? Just for you. You might have to work for it with this one, honey," Beppe addressed the girl, "He's pretty uptight. I think you're just what he needs!"

Beppe chortled and punched Jack on the arm, giving the whore's pert behind a firm slap before staggering over to an ebony skinned girl twirling her weave between her fingers. The blonde sidled closer to his side and then reached out to touch his left hand.

"No ring, huh? That's nice. I always kinda hate doin' the married guys." Her voice was quavering, unevenly fluctuating between whiny and smooth. "You're real cute, ya know? Ya don't look Italian, neither."

"How observant of you." The blonde smiled warmly at what she mistook as a genuine compliment. "But I'm actually not on the, uh . . . market."

"Hey, it's okay if you're married afta all. I mean, I said I didn't like it, but sometimes it can be –"

"Go waste your time on somebody else, sweetheart, I'm not interested."

With eyes already looking past the stricken expression on the young girl's face – she couldn't be older than sixteen years old, underneath all of that makeup. Lola's age, almost. . . – Jack scanned the packed and smoky room for the scarred face he knew so well. If he knew Angelo, the man would have slipped quietly away into a corner somewhere so as to not be disturbed. He would be alone of course – he always was. Angelo never took part in this sort of philandering any more than Jack did. Though now Jack understand why exactly that was.

Jack found him sitting out on the fire escape, long legs dangling down between the rusty railings and a cigarette sticking out of the corner of his mouth. It was obvious on first inspection that the man was already quite drunk – his forehead rested against one iron bar and his eyes were closed, the cigarette ready to fall out from his lips and plummet to the damp ground below. Jack reached out and plucked it from his mouth.

"Give it 'ack," Angelo muttered, reaching out and taking a lazy swipe at Jack's knee. An indolent cinnamon cat who'd gotten into the Christmas eggnog. One dark eye squinted up at Jack through the dark. He let out an annoyed groan. "Oh, _you_."

"Yeah, me." With much shaking of the unsteady escape, Jack lowered himself down to sit beside Angelo.

"You been ron-do-voo-ing with your _squeeze_?" Angelo snatched the cigarette away from Jack and shoved it into his mouth, bending the thin stick and getting hot ash all over his clothes. He swore and pat at himself violently.

"Rendezvousing?"

"Ohhhh, now he's _intellectual_. Correctin' the stupid Wop's grammar 'n shit . . ."

"For the last time, I'm not sleeping with Peyton. We're . . ." Jack lowered his voice until it was no more than a whisper, impossible to hear over the din coming from inside of Angelo's apartment. Somewhere near – coming from, he guessed, Angelo's bedroom – he heard the heavy creak of bedsprings and the dull thudding of a headboard bouncing off of drywall. There was no chance of being overheard by the people inside over such noise – besides, most of them were too . . .busy . . . to care. "doing business together. She hired me to help her take out Johnny, Angelo. She wants him dead."

Instead of the start of surprise, or even the violent response, that Jack had expected, Angelo just snorted derisively and snapped, "You think I didn't _know_ that? Whad'you think that . . . a guy like me just _happened_ to go down to the docks while you were there? Just _decided_ to go sit by you? To invite you to a _private_ poker game? . . . Ah, Jay, you think I'm slower than I really am. Johnny had me tailin' you this entire time."

How easily the situation turned itself around on him, and yet . . . besides the shock, beneath of the slight numbness he felt, there was that respect again. Respect for Angelo, who had, despite everything anyone had ever thought of him, deceived everyone.

"He knew that Peyton was gettin' ideas . . . he shot Henry dead the night he met with you. Henry was my boy before he was Peyton's. I suggested him to watch over her, knowin' . . . knowin' he'd keep his fat mouth shut if he found out she was workin' against him. And afterwards John told me, 'Angelo, you're the only man I can trust now. You follow New Boy, be his friend, get him to tell you what that bitch is cookin' up. And the minute you see him blink in the wrong direction, blow his brains out.'" Angelo shook his head ruefully, puffing on his bent cigarette with vigor. "And so I followed you. But what was I gonna say? I knew you were workin' with her. I didn't want her killed – I _couldn't _see her killed . . . So I lied 'n told John that there wasn't nothing goin' on. That you were clean. You woulda been caught fifty times over if it hadn't been for me protectin' her . . . . You woulda been dead months ago if it wasn't for me . . ."

With one last deep inhale, Angelo tossed his cigarette out into the night, a pinpoint of glowing red spiraling into a dark abyss.

"If I'd known that you'd go 'n start fuckin' her . . . I woulda killed you on that first night. But now . . ."

Jack was smiling so wide his face hurt. A troubling reaction to most, he was sure, but to him it all made such glorious, perfect sense. In a way it was almost funny, how close he had come to death, and through his own foolishness. And there he sat, alive and well, able to see the moon hanging heavy and partially obscured by smog in the inky dark sky; still possessing the possibility of going home one more time to see his girl and his sister. He'd hung onto his life by the grace of a scarred, lovesick mobster.

Sometimes Jack was convinced that the entire universe was just one large comedian who loved to play jokes; who lived on inflicting the direst sort of irony on its inhabitants.

All of those long months wondering why he liked Angelo Sabatino so much, when at first glance he was nothing more than a common idiot, and now . . . Maybe he'd known all along that there was more. That Angelo wasn't just a brainless chump. Jack had played the game so stupidly up till now, that was obvious. Angelo was right – if it hadn't been for him, Jack would be dead by now. And that girl, his sister, they would have been grieving for months. Jack never would have had that peaceful night of sleep with that girl, or the following morning's comfortable talk. A million moments that might have been missed, and he hadn't realized their importance until it was made clear to him how close he'd come to having them ripped from him.

"I guess everybody had it wrong. You're not the fool . . . I am."

"Damn right you are," Angelo muttered sullenly, but not without some good-natured smugness. "If I was feelin' angry I'd make you dress up like a clown and dance around just to prove it, but hey . . . I ain't nothin' if not forgivin'."

"But now that everything is out in the open . . . You want Johnny out of the picture as much as Peyton does. As much as I do. You can help us do it . . ."

"What would be the point? So we knock off John and replace him with . . . Gino, say, right? That won't change nothin'. Things aren't bad just because John is a first class chickenshit. A crime family can only be on top for so long. Us, we've had our run. We were the best, probably gonna be remembered as the first real organized crime family there ever was. Old Johnny ruled this place for years 'n nothin' could touch him. Sean Riley tried to rise up and take over but couldn't quite cut it. But that's over now. Our time's runnin' out. That bastard Carmine Falcone . . . The suppliers, they like to have a little change once in a while. Falcone's got more connections, more charm, less chance o' gettin' tracked down by the coppers." Angelo ticked off the reasons on his spidery fingers, and then threw his hands up in the air as if in an expression of complete defeat. "He's next to rule this place. There ain't no stoppin' it. " In his agitation Angelo reached for yet another cigarette, pulling it out and jamming it between his lips.

"Fine, if we fail then at least we go out on top. You think Johnny will let something like that happen peacefully? There'll be turf wars . . . How many of your cousins in there are gonna end up six feet under because Johnny can't let go? Sean Riley wanted to unite all the mobs, but Johnny stood in the way. If you put somebody with vision up there with Peyton, someone who'd let her speak and treated her right, you'd have the Irish behind you. Falcone wouldn't have a chance to take over completely, so he'd settle for . . . what . . . half? A share? The Sabatinos don't _have_ to fall."

"And who you gonna suggest to put in charge, huh? You?" Angelo's tone was sharp and bitter.

"I was thinking more along the lines of . . . you, actually. I think that your family married Peyton off to the wrong guy. But you know . . . it's never too late to fix little mistakes like _that_."

A discerning man can always tell when they've hit that fragile chord inside of another, plucked it until it snapped right in half in their very hands. Jack may not have played the game well up to this point, but he'd already decided he would have to change his tune. Before this moment things had been messy, a jumble of inharmonic screeches that correlated with nothing and resulted in a cacophony of wrong notes and botched rhythms. From now on things had to be different. No more background music – it was time to conduct a symphony.

"What – That's nuts." The man ran one hand along the thick lesion on his forehead. "You don't know what you're talkin' about."

"I do. Peyton –"

"Doesn't never even look my way. What'd a girl like her want with a – a stupid cripple like me?"

In a way Jack felt for him. Not for his physical disability – he would never pity him that again, not after he'd shown how very conniving he could still be – but for the affection that he garnered which could never be returned. Jack was instilling hope in this man, telling him that he could maybe dream, that she may, one day, return his feelings. He knew it was a lie. Peyton Riley would never care for anybody but herself. If there had been a time, a man, that she had cared about beyond her own needs and wants . . . . that time, that man, was gone. Left in the dust forever, leaving only smoggy ambition and rancid self-interest in its wake. Jack would do and say what he had to, just as he and Peyton had planned, and he would not feel more than a twinge of guilt over it. Yet he still could not deny that the man's situation was a pathetic one. At least he, Jack, knew that his girl was exactly that – his and his alone. Angelo would never be able to say that.

"She's delicate right now. Johnny crushed every hope she had at happiness. Someone like you would look real good to her . . . Someone who'd treat her right. Let her know he knew she was worth something. That's all she wants."

"I-I know she's worth somethin'. I been sayin' it since the day I met her and . . . Listen, you really think I got a chance, Jay? Don't lie to me. As my friend, as the man who saved your skin a thousand times over since you joined up with Johnny, you tell me – D'you really think I have a chance?"

It wasn't nearly as hard as lying to that girl, but it still rankled a bit somewhere deep inside. But if Jack could count on anything, it was his ability to lie convincingly. And so when he replied, "Yes", he knew Angelo would believe him.

And he did.

* * *

**A/N: **Ah, another chapter out! I really want to get to the end of part one. You have no idea how excited I am to share it all with you guys – hopefully it won't disappoint! There'll be about four or five more chapters after this one. Think around twenty for the first half. And then the second will pick up, and that'll be around fifteen or twenty too, I'm thinking. So yeah. Long. I guess we'll see if anybody stays on for the entire ride?

So, everyone please tell me what you think of this chapter! Any new expectations on who is going to give Jack those scars? I'm hoping it won't be too obvious just yet. : )

A big thanks to everyone who reviewed last chapter! You guys surpass yourselves every update! Let's keep that up, shall we?

Oh, BTW, I'm looking for a really GOOD book to read. Something that'll have me close to tears, or fidgeting with excitement over what'll happen. Any suggestions? I've hit a brick wall in my search for fantastic literature, and I have a feeling you guys might be just the people to ask. : D

~B


	16. Chapter 16

"Ta-Da!"

Jack stepped backwards and blinked at the room in front of him. Where Lola's bed should have been there sat an entirely foreign bed frame, taking up the entire room wall-to-wall. The mattress was covered in soft, dark sheets that Jack had never set eyes on before. The room was littered with items he recognized: a scratched and minutely abused boudoir from that girl's room with an ornate mirror attached; little, delicate bottles of glass carrying equally delicate scents inside scattered on the top of two polished oak dressers that shone and reflected dim, rosy lighting. But that wasn't all – there were hairbrushes with dark strands still tangled around the bristles and a red pea coat jacket that he'd seen that girl wrap around herself a thousand times during the past three winters. A pair of torn up sneakers that she wore when she was around the neighborhood stuck out from beneath of the bed and besides them, the toes of the shiny buckled black shoes which she wore to school were just visible. Battered thrift store copies of books she'd saved up enough money to buy were shoved into a narrow shelf that looked ready to topple over at any given moment. Many of these titles were racy, and Jack recognized with some amusement the title _Never Trust a Scoundrel._ Finally, sprawled across the bedspread with a smile plastered on her face, was that girl herself.

"Did I walk into the wrong apartment?" Jack inquired, picking up a gold music box that had sat in that girl's room for as long as he could remember. It was a birthday gift from her father. The congressman had stopped sending such personal presents long ago. The box was very expensive, made with 18-carat gold filigree and hand-carved with intricate engravings of flowers and animal life. On the lid there were even jewels inlaid, a few tiny diamonds that dotted the eyes of elephants and minuscule specks of rubies that dangled on lions' fangs. It was the only thing she owned that she hadn't pawned for cash for Lola yet – the only thing her father had given her that she had left.

She was selling it to a pawnshop on the way to school the next morning, and Jack could hardly look at it without feeling his stomach drop with guilt.

"Of course not!" she sing-songed as she sat upright. "I did a little remodeling, that's all."

"Uh-huh . . . and since you've given everything to Lola, how are you possibly going to sleep in your room?"

The energy radiating from her was something rare and unique, electrifying in its own way and entirely contagious. It'd been such a long time since she'd smiled with such complete joy, or laughed so easily at something he said. It reminded him of a different time when he was still a child and she had laughed at everything.

She sashayed over and slipped her hands into his, leaning in close and placing kisses along his neck and jaw in a way that sent shivers down his spine.

"This _is_ my room, now. Mom lost the apartment and we got into a huge fight about me coming with her and working for my rent, and I told her to go to hell and got out of there. Found a cheap bed and gave Lola my old one. I bought a new mattress and frame, of course, but it was discount. Some old lady just died. Pretty new, doesn't even smell like death or cough drops or . . . other old people smells, you know? A couple of spritzes of perfume and it was as good as new. Lola's stuff is in your mom's old room. She says she likes it better anyhow, because it's got a better view out the window and the bathroom is real close. Wheeler helped me move the big stuff. He's a nice old guy."

Her high, excited voice quickened the pace of his heart for reasons he couldn't exactly fathom. It was just a room, after all, just a title, her living in his apartment, officially. Honestly, he had to have expected it would happen sooner or later. She loved being around Lola, loved being around him, hated being around her mom . . . Natural, expected.

So why was the prospect so thrilling to him? It wasn't as if she'd never slept in his room with him before. But this felt different, it felt more permanent. It felt like something that was real, that belonged to him now. She felt like something that truly belonged to him, now.

"You're all right with it, aren't you? You look a little shell-shocked."

"Oh – no, no. That's . . . great. Lola must be out of her mind with . . ." his voice trailed off as his eyes, scanning over the room, landed on a dresser drawer, where the strap of a blue bra was hanging out. She had probably thrown it hastily in and closed the drawer just as he was walking in the door. This sort of intimacy was new to him, oddly alien and . . . he didn't know if it was nice, yet.

With her unsettling ability to follow his line of thought without him having to say a word, that girl smiled and said, "So you're living with two girls, now. I feel your pain. But it won't be all that bad. I mean, think of it this way, three weeks out of the month we'll be perfect angels, at your beck and call to make a sandwich at any hour of the night. Or, something like that, anyway. Isn't that what guys love to hear about their little women?"

After a beat of silence, in which that girl waited breathlessly for some sort of response from him and to which he could only open his mouth and then close it abruptly, she continued.

"I mean it's not like this _changes_ anything. . . you can obviously still sleep on your rickety little cot thing in that utility closet . . . But . . ." Her voice dipped low and changed tone, until he was leaning closer to her just to catch the words she was speaking. It was, he imagined, exactly what she wanted. When she looked up at him, her eyes were hooded and slightly seductive. "Well, it can get pretty cold in there. So if you ever want something . . . hotter . . . I'm just down the hall."

The muscles in his throat felt constricted, clenched so tightly that swallowing was at least ten times harder than it would normally be. The pitch of his voice was off when he spoke, and he had to clear his throat before he went on. "That – That's a pretty bold suggestion."

"Well . . ."

"Eugh, you two make me sick. Well, sick_er_. If I didn't already have cancer I think your lame romantic moments would bring it on."

Lola shuffled into the room, a fleece blanket wrapped around her fragile shoulders and a narrow tube winding around her ears, underneath of her nose, and then disappearing into the bundle of cloth that she was cocooned in. Her skin was almost translucent, a thin sheet of paper separating the intricate workings of a body from the harshness of the outside world. It was almost as if she got sicker every time he came home – with all of the time he spent with the mob, he didn't always have time to see his little sister. She was in bed so often that the most he caught a glimpse of was the top of her bald head; a minute of hearing her rasping breath before closing the door softly and creeping off to his own slumber, which could never be sound after a sight like that.

Lola lowered herself wearily onto the bed and looked around. "Not too shabby. I'll do ya guys a favor and put tha radio on real loud tanight, and then take my pills so I _know_ I'm sound asleep."

"Can it," snapped Jack, his neck flushing hotly. The moment had been dispelled so unceremoniously that it was hard imagining they'd ever get it back, even after Lola was gone.

That girl laughed a little awkwardly and then moved from his side, placing herself next to Lola. He was used to that – whenever Lola was in the room she was first priority, as she should be. Still . . . it had been such a promising moment . . .

"You like your set up?"

"Oh yeah, real cozy. Your old bed is much nicer than mine was. Not so many lumps . . ."

"Good, I –"

The phone in his pocket vibrated insistently, and Jack, without bothering to excuse himself, slipped unobtrusively from Lola's room – or, he supposed, that girl's room – and answered the phone.

"Jay, Jay, Jay." That girl wasn't the only one in high spirits that day. Angelo sounded ecstatic. "Where are you at a time like this? Big things are a'happenin'."

Jack stumbled over his words as he answered, entirely bemused by Angelo's chipper tone.

"What do you mean? Wait, wait, should we be talking about this on this phone?"

Angelo laughed: a carefree, jovial sound. "Nah, it's clean. Don't worry. What you should be focusin' on is the fact that I'm in – I'm on board! And not to sound too cocky, but I'm pretty sure that every single man at that poker game a couple days ago is too. Talk about gettin' the ball rollin', huh? Who knew dumb ol' Angelo'd come through so well?"

"This is a change of heart . . . What got you to switch your tune from 'Thinking About It' to 'In The Game'?"

"Well . . . I figured since you told me I had a chance with Peyton I'd go 'n talk her up a little, get the 4-1-1. And it turns out you were right, can you believe it?"

"I . . . was?"

In his mind, he could hear Angelo's voice, thick with emotion, as he spoke to Jack last, filling in every blank space of time that Jack had wondered over, per his request.

"_The first time I met her was right after I got outta the hospital. Stitched up, my head achin' something fierce, lookin' like Frankenstein 'n shit. I'd known of her before, ya know, everyone in the family knew about Sean Riley's little princess. But man . . . man. I never seen her up close, before that. Never heard her talk. I dunno if it was just because I was so weak or lonely or feelin' so fuckin' stupid for even livin' through that accident. Whatever it was, that was it. She came over and asked 'Pass me the champagne', and she was so pretty and I wasn't so good at reactin' to things just then, and it took me a whole two minutes of starin' before I realized that I should be tryin' to process what she was sayin'. She sorta rolled her eyes at me, but I guess somebody had warned her about stupid ol' Angelo because she didn't say nothin' – just 'Thanks, and by the way your fly's unzipped.' Which sums up my luck right there, doesn't it?_

"_Anyway, I took to findin' out a little about her, and as soon as I realized she wasn't just all hips and legs and, Christ, chest, I just about lost it. A brain and ambition underneath all of that thick hair? The thing that killed was I knew that if it'd happened a year earlier, before that accident . . . If she'd met me before then, she might have given me a second glance. But it wasn't long after that that she married John and I swear, with my hand on the Bible, that it was the worst fuckin' day of my life."_

This wasn't the same Angelo who had murmured out his story, the beginning of his infatuation, with a hopeless sort of resignation that only unrequited love can lend to the nuances of a man's tone.

This was an altogether different Angelo Sabatino, and Jack didn't know what to make of it. Two days ago, Jack would have sworn high and low that it was more likely for an asteroid to crash into Wayne Manor than for Peyton Riley to give Angelo a second thought. It didn't make sense.

"Fuck yes, you were. I'm not the type to kiss 'n tell but . . . Hell, we were doin' a lot more than just kissin', if you get my drift. She's nuts about me, man. Who'd o' thought? Me! But anyhow, she told me that so long as John's outta the picture, it's all free and clear for us. I can hardly hold up the phone my hands are shakin' so bad, you don't even know. What d'ya think of that, huh?"

"That's . . . great."

"Great? It's fuckin' fantastic! I ain't never been so happy. Hey, hey, but I gotta go. The missus is callin'." His voice tightened with poorly suppressed glee at those words. "Meet us tonight at the warehouse – Peyton's, I mean, not John's."

The line went dead, and Jack slipped his phone back into his pocket, wondering just what game Peyton Riley thought she was playing. This hadn't been part of the plan. Peyton didn't care for Angelo, she was only stringing him along for her own objectives, her own gain. Not theirs, not the gain they'd both plotted for, but for her own secret and exclusive earnings. And when that was achieved, then what? She'd ruin everything by dumping him out on his ass, splitting the two mobs once again. What did she think she was doing?

* * *

"I know exactly what I'm doing," Riley replied coolly, in response to Jack's heated whisper. She stood in front of a full-length mirror, examining her eyebrows and putting on a pair of blue-stoned earrings. "He's nice. Worships me. Good in bed, too. I mean, what's wrong with having a little fun with this while I'm at it?"

"You're going to ruin everything. When you toss him aside –"

"Who says I will?" Riley shrugged, her countenance poised and indifferent. "After all, being in power is all I really want. Love? Who cares. Been there, done that. It didn't get me a damn thing. Angelo is a far sight better than Johnny, even if he's a lot less good-looking. Besides, what's that saying? Oh, yeah – 'You should always marry a man who loves you more than you love him'. Something like that."

She picked up a rounded pink vial and misted perfume onto her slender, swan-like neck.

"You're playing me, Peyton. I don't know how yet, but I know you are."

"I'm looking out for the best for the both of us. I get my power, my respect, the position I've always deserved, while my new husband does the double good deed of uniting the mobs like Daddy always wanted, and letting me have a free and generous reign like _I've_ always wanted. So there it is, plain and simple. You can rest easy on behalf of your buddy Angelo. It seems like the only one with a problem in this situation is you, Jay."

Jack fumed silently, his mind working diligently to analyze the meaning of this turn of events. Peyton was undoubtedly playing her own game, and he didn't like it. If she was beginning to exclude him there was no telling what she was planning. Now that the end was in sight and the dirty work was done, was he expendable? Of course. But surely she wouldn't think Angelo would let him walk away without a piece of the profit . . .

"If you're trying to scam me out of my cut of the money . . ."

"Oh, don't be so dramatic. I've got sixty thousand lined up for you, Jay. A thank you from the Rileys for manipulating just the right people. Willie's going to have it in a couple of weeks, a month at the most. How does that sound, huh? Baby sis could get some real medicine . . . And then you can make your decision on if you want to stay in or get out. Personally I'd say stay in, but since you seem to have a Holly Homemaker waiting for you to get to your dinner before it gets cold, the latter would obviously look good to you. No matter how _boring_ it is."

There she was, back on top and in control and gloating about it. He'd been knocked down from whatever perch he'd managed to claw his way up on to in his dealings with Angelo. Now she was in control, and there was no way he could get it back, no way to retake the reins. The most he could do is sit back and wait, helpless as to the outcome of this situation – the very thing he'd joined the mob to put an end to.

"Losing that guy really messed you up, didn't it?" Jack struck out blindly, trying fruitlessly to injure her in some way. It was feeble, he knew it, but he had to say _something_. "I wonder what Angelo would say if I told him his new girl is still in love with someone else?"

Undisturbed by Jack's attempt to unsettle her, Riley grinned toothily and replied, "I wouldn't do that if I were you. Men with delusions like Angelo has can be dangerous when you try to rip them away. They hold onto them like they're the only things holding them to life. You try to tell him different and he'll go into denial, and probably shoot you just to reassure himself that you're wrong.

"In other words, go ahead and tell him. I doubt many people would miss you once you're gone."

* * *

Jack let himself into his apartment at half past two in the morning. Angelo had been in high spirits, so high that after inviting over a few choice Sabatino family members and announcing his plan to take the organization over he'd gotten so drunk that he spent the next hour puking over his fire escape and into the alley below. When he finally passed out, his skin pale and his scar standing out hideously against the pallor of his face, it had been nearly two o'clock.

Jack was still troubled about everything that was happening. The men who Angelo had invited over and with whom he had shared such dangerous, traitorous information were to be trusted, supposedly. True, they all loved Angelo without measure. True also that they were the ones who Jack had always gotten the best response out of when breeching the subject of replacing Johnny. Still, could not rest easy. He had done things in whispers and sly maneuvers for so long that it was hard to wrap his mind around the fact that it was no longer a secret plan. And the sight of Angelo sitting aside Peyton Riley, their hands touching and Peyton smiling an almost angelic smile . . . . It was wrong. All wrong. Something was happening behind the scenes that Angelo wasn't aware of, something that even Jack was excluded from, and it wasn't right. He knew it would end badly for somebody, and the only thing to wait for was the answer to the question "Who?"

His cot felt cold and uninviting when he climbed into it, the tense muscles of his body crying out against such discomfort when what they really longed for was . . . complete relaxation. The sort of release that left everything else behind and inconsequential; forgotten, the sort of careless ease that only came when the arms of that girl wrapped around him. He'd known from the moment he saw her things in his home that it was the change of everything. And the intimacy he sensed was not from the presence of a bra strap or a few bottles of violet scented perfume . . . It was from her existence, her proximity, the stifling knowledge that she was so _close_ he could literally reach out and touch her. And why not touch her? Why not?

He dragged his hands over his face. After only a minute in his own bed he abandoned it, slipping out into the hall he'd walked a thousand times but never with such purpose as this; never with the knowledge that what he was going to when he left his room was far better than the seclusion of being alone inside of it.

He knew she'd be sleeping, of course; the hour was so late it was very doubtful she'd be awake. In a way, he was thankful for the unconsciousness. It allowed him to slip into her bed without her inquisitive eyes staring up at him with the sort of expressive question posed in them that stopped him dead in his tracks.

The black tresses of her hair were fanned out across her pillow, pulled back into a sloppy bun that had already come undone, the springy curls falling across her forehead and framing the graceful curve of her neck. For a moment he stood soundlessly in her doorway, just breathing, just thinking of all the consequences to this action. There were so many, he knew, so many ways it might go horribly wrong. And yet seeing her there, so content and relaxed, left him aching for her. It was a thing beyond his careful reasoning, beyond even his mind. All he knew was that this was his girl, and it was time for him to prove it.

As his weight bent the bedsprings and jostled her thin form, she let out a murmur in her sleep, glossy eyelids fluttering and lips parting. Her body stretched outwards, opening itself up as if it anticipated him already, as if it'd been waiting for him. It recognized the intent before her conscious mind did, but then, the conscious mind wasn't far behind.

"Jack . . .?"

Her eyes opened fully the minute he touched her. It was just a gentle stroking of his fingers down her neck and yet it held a thousand words more articulate and to-the-point than he could ever speak in that moment. The raspy husk of her voice wasn't just sleepy, it was frightened, it was vulnerable, it was anxious . . . Was she regretting the provocative inflection of her words earlier that day? Wishing she could take them back? Had she not expected this to happen; expected it to fall through as it had so many other times? Back in the fall, just after the last time they had touched intimately, when he had first opened the chasm of divide between them, it had been his fault that things hadn't gone through. And it would be his doing if they were to go through, now.

He let her know his intent with every kiss he placed on her lips and face and neck; softened his fingers so that the exploration of his hands would be unthreatening and welcome to her, though what his limbs really longed to do was tear the clothes from her body roughly, without prelude, and claim, claim, claim. He'd never have thought that half an inch of cotton fabric covering her legs and torso would cause him so much frustration and yet it did. All he wanted was to see her bare skin, every last square inch of it, cement himself forever as the first to have seen her bare, impossible to take back. That would never do, though; it wasn't how she wanted this to happen. He forced himself to go slowly, languid kisses and whispers and the friction of their bodies that, this time, was only the beginning.

After the initial surprise of his appearance, of the weight of his body beside her and his breath on her neck, she began to respond to him. Soft arms came up around his neck and pulled him closer to her, her face nestling into the hollow of his throat as she placed kisses there. When her cool fingers slipped underneath of the hem of his shirt and brushed across the heated expanse of his stomach the muscles in his abdomen clenched spasmodically and his breath came rapidly. Every gasp was loud, sonorous in the dark stillness, and he could hear that when she touched him he was not the only one to respond.

Her trembling fingers roamed over his chest and back and arms in exploratory fashion, a blind woman feeling her lover out for the first time. His skin was heating up in his clothing, combusting, a slow burn that was unbearable. Hastily, he yanked his shirt over his head and shook his hair out of his eyes, but even that didn't help; a cool flicker across skin and then another flare, at the look she gave him. She'd seen him shirtless countless of times before, but he knew it was all different tonight, everything meant something heavier: every touch and sigh and whisper were intensified in importance. Her eyes widened in the darkness, and with renewed vigor she pulled him to her and kissed him hard.

That time in the bathroom had been so long ago. There'd been a thousand moments since then, a couple darkened nights pressed together in his makeshift bed, her legs cramped and his fingers hovering between continuing and pulling back. He never had known just what was best – she was She, exalted, and to touch her would be to ruin her, but he wanted her so badly, and she never said a word to help him decide, just waited with bated breath. And always, always, he looked at her flawless skin and wondered if it would still be flawless after he brought out the human in her. Pulled back, and he couldn't say who it was who was more disappointed when he did – she always wanted the things that were worst for her.

This time, no, there was no retreating. He wasn't the only one to see to it. She undressed in front of him, forgoing the awkward fumbling-for-unfamiliar-buttons-and-clasps stage, which he couldn't believe relieved him so much. The main reasoning of her state of nakedness seemed to come from a schoolyard definition of fair – he was shirtless, so was she, and that was it for now. His move. Only he'd forgotten how. There was a window in this new room, casting silvery light into the room. Jack was certain that the reason for its existing in the side of that dilapidated brick building was to illuminate the lovely shades of her hidden skin just the way it was: smooth and supple and erratically rising and falling, covered in starlight and goose bumps.

Another beat, a pause, and she shivered and crossed her arms over her naked breasts and blushed. "Would – would you say something? Please? Just say something?"

Useless, because he was sure he'd also forgotten how to speak. That night in the bathroom he'd been so certain; when he'd slipped into bed with her he'd known just how it would go. He'd always been in control, and now, now he was shaking more than she was. It was only just striking him that what he knew amounted to a sketchy and embarrassing overview in health class, the crude – albeit sometimes graphically helpful – and exaggerated boasting of men he knew, and pure instinct.

The only thing he knew how to do was lean forward and capture her lips with his own. He hadn't done what she'd asked of him, but maybe it was better to keep the fumbling words to a minimum – he had fumbling fingers enough to cover it.

It must have been the right move, because the freeze-frame – as pleasing to the eye as it had been – unthawed and melted. She settled into a more comfortable stance, the tension in her muscles unwinding and releasing her limbs and her spine, her arms falling away and then encircling him as he laid himself out flat against her and buried his face into her hair. Skin on skin, too much, not enough. The nerves in his fingertips marveled at the smoothness of her as they slipped along the curve of one breast, across the ribcage, dipped low with the hollow of her stomach and then rested at her hips, where the endlessness of her person hit an elastic band of a wall. All at once, it seemed a matter of extreme importance for him to pull that barrier away. She jumped as his fingers slipped under both layers and, without further unnecessary ado, removed them, exposing the first completely naked girl he'd ever seen in his life.

Clouds passed in the sky outside, flushing the room with a darkness that seemed to intensify the silence. That girl shivered where she lay; crossed her legs then uncrossed them, and then crossed them again. Indecisive, timid. It was that more than anything, that blinding innocence, that reminded him of who he was, what he was, how he was. Reminded him that he wasn't holding up his end of the bargain this time – if she was uncertain, it was his job to be assured.

She trembled once more as he reached for the clasp of his jeans, sucking in a tight breath and then reaching up to straighten hair that was completely untamable, seemingly in an effort to do _something_ with her shaking hands. He could almost taste the nervousness radiating from her in waves, the anxiety, and it only made him want her more, immediately, right then without delay. Each naive, awkward movement she made sent thrills through him. It was a broadcast, his alone. _I've never been touched_, it murmured, _not like this. You're the first. There's nobody else this belongs to. _

Waves of his old, steady confidence rose up and took him. Coaxed him forward, dictated his movements. The next step was in obvious: calm her, press his lips to those half-raised kneecaps and slip his hands along her thighs, spread them until he was right there in between her legs, where he felt he must have been meant to be. Nothing could move forward unless he did, and it was becoming a need, a _demand_, that he proceed. The moonlight was starting to stream back in; illuminated her figure just lying there, all soft curves and virgin skin. His pulse hummed at the sight.

It was easy, what came next. At the gentlest brush of his lips over her leg, the slightest pressure of his fingertips, she opened up, inhaled, pulled him in along with the sultry night air. Their faces were level, their breath – his stained with the one shot he'd taken, toasting the Sabatino name, and hers with mint toothpaste and sleep – mixed in the air. He kept his eyes trained on hers as he settled himself between her legs, the soft inner flesh of her thighs; watched the eyelashes flutter, the tip of the tongue moisten the lips, the neck extend and constrict as she swallowed. His heart hammered against his chest. This was the time to turn back. One simple maneuver and it'd be too late; there would be no way he could stop.

The need to take her was stifling, and he might have ignored it and backed away still, he told himself he could do it, told himself he might have, if not for the gentle rise of her hips that beckoned him onwards without words.

He wondered if she knew what she was doing, inviting him the way she was. Wondered why her eyes looked, all of the sudden, so calm, so accepting, as if she'd done this all the time and it was nothing new, while he was still trembling and struggling to hold onto whatever control he had left. It was the worst time to remember the suggestions she'd made in hopes of earning extra money; the resurfacing of all those dark, blurry, faceless horrors he tortured himself with visions of whenever she was gone for an hour longer than expected. But he couldn't help it. He never could.

A look of relief passed over her face as he pressed his lips against her collarbone, a trail of kisses scattering across the desert plain of her skin. He could feel her now, that raw heat reaching out to stroke him almost deliberately, or so it felt, so it seemed, and he couldn't stand the thought of anyone else being with her just like this. He had to know, had to, that he hadn't been naive in thinking she'd kept all her promises, spoken or unspoken, to him.

With one hand, steady now, he guided himself to that exact position, the one that would make everything fall into place. He wanted to finally discover the secret of her, that girl and her dubious fidelity, and the fact that she was the only person who had any idea how to make him feel completely . . . like this. As if there was nothing horrible or wrong in the world and the only monsters that lived and breathed were the ones that existed in his own imagination. He wasn't sure if it was reality, this feeling, or a trick she played, ensnaring and bewitching and confounding him until he didn't know what was the truth, anymore.

In the back of his mind, he felt somewhat guilty, but then, he had to know. It was a riddle, she was a riddle; each pore of her skin and every single vein in her body, pumping life, crisscrossing, contracting, to fashion this epic puzzle that would plague him forever, unless he found it out. When she looked up at him next he found he was almost unable to breathe; like she'd placed every single hope she'd ever had in him, at that exact moment, and he knew without a doubt that he couldn't _not_ disappoint.

The first push was the easiest, the hardest, the dizziest and the most satisfying. _Go slow, _she'd offered up once, when the topic had come up, _it'll . . . you know . . . hurt._ He knew that. Of course he knew it. Because virgins, true ones, cry out at the pain. Bleed from it. And if she was really his, completely, never touched, never taken, then so would she. He wanted her to.

The shock of her voice in the stillness, cutting through it violently, raw, stunned him. It was solid reality colliding with liquid dream, a beacon through the foggy haze of lust that had captured his mind. It was stifled quickly with her hand over her mouth, her eyes clenched tightly closed. No tears slipped down her cheeks, but the pain was etched there, enough for him, enough of an assurance. There was no doubt about the validity of her reaction; not even when she pried her eyelids open to look up at him, without annoyance or anger or even disappointment – just more trust, more understanding, as if she'd waited for it, had expected this roughness, all along. Because she knew him.

He had a feeling she might not have expected the pain of the second thrust, reaching the deeper places inside of her – God, _inside_ of her – and he wasn't entirely sure he should enjoy the stifled gasp that ripped from her throat so much. Her hands reached out and pressed themselves flat against his shoulders, the nails biting into his skin as he moved, almost in a subconscious effort to push him away, stop the pain, which her conscious mind overrode and denied. The blue of her eyes was hidden from his devouring gaze again, behind a thin sliver of skin with long feathery eyelashes dangling on the ends.

Palm flat against her cheek, he spoke his first words of the night, the huskiness in his voice taking him by surprise; he did not sound like himself, this mix of tender reverence and carnal need that he'd only heard hinted there one time before, in a bathroom smelling of mildew.

"Look at me." Acquiescence for half a moment, blue meeting brown. A heavy feeling filled his throat as he pulled back, an ache in the absence of her, and then a glorious release as he reached inwards again, as far as he could possibly go. She winced, cut his request short. She might be anyone lying beneath him in the darkness with her brilliant eyes hidden like that, and he didn't want to be fucking anyone, he wanted to be fucking her, the elusive her, the her he'd never allowed himself to honestly expect to be fucking.

His teeth captured her bottom lip, an old fantasy of his that he felt good doing, felt dominant in the action of. Sweet breath that was not his own filled his mouth as she exhaled, matched his rough nip with a soft, fluttering kiss that sent a shiver to the very tips of his toes. He groaned against her lips; crushed his fingers against the pulse of her neck until he could feel every beat of her heart at his fingertips.

"Look at me, Louise." It came out like a demand; aching, dense. At the sound of her name, they snapped open, round and wide, focused on his pupils so completely he scarcely saw them move. "Don't close them. _Don't_."

Jack had often wondered about how this would feel, this coupling, his girl and him alone and entangled and breathing heavily. His musings had never prepared him for this, these deliciously acute pangs of agonizing bliss that kept him buzzing with pleasure, gritting his teeth with frustration. They had never prepared him for the frantic, relentless building of pressure that pounded against every muscle, every inch of skin, every nerve, like a heartbeat, no matter his efforts to beat it back, to prolong it all. Never gave him a hint about the heat that caressed him, the slick wetness, the muscles that clenched around him so goddamned _tightly_ he could hardly stand it, it was so good.

Her eyes stayed open, riveted on him, and after several minutes he became aware of the fact that she was no longer wincing; the only indication of residual pain evident in the tightness of her lips at choice moments, that rogue thrust that went too deep, not deep enough. Beads of sweat slipped down her neck and over the curves of her breasts. He dipped low to lap them up, the salty taste of her skin strong on his tongue, the sigh of pleasure or contentment that came from her like the brushing of soft summer leaves against his cheek.

He knew he could do this all night, forever, until they both died from exhaustion, but what a happy, fulfilled death it would be. He knew that he wouldn't last much longer, that soon it would be over and he hated it and loved it and longed for it and dreaded it.

Somewhere amidst the chaotic spiraling he was experiencing as he descended down, down, he noted the quickened pace of her heart, the feel of her hands and arms and body as she pulled him to her, encouraging the full length of him, all the way, despite whatever pain she still felt. He was murmuring words against her skin that even he couldn't decipher, and it was minutes, seconds, just one second more and . . .

"I love you. I love you so much, Jack." She whispered it hoarsely, breathed it beseechingly into his neck, her jagged nails clutching at him as if she was terrified he'd slip through her fingers and melt away into the night, leave her forever.

He didn't respond; he wasn't able to. All speech was lost on him as he buried his face into the tangles of her loosed hair and cried out, her scent, her arms, every secret, perfect place she had, surrounding him.


	17. Chapter 17

**A/N:** So, this chapter was pseudo-necessary. I mean, all things considered, if you left this one out the story wouldn't change. But it does go a long way to flesh things up; and, I don't want things to happen too fast. The little story that Jack tells in this chapter does have its purpose - a rather obvious one, I hope, but as always I am open for discussion via reviews!

Which leads me to that – shame on you, **Imogen Kain, **for not logging in so I could tell you privately and thoroughly how fucking AWESOME you are! Your review was amazing, as always.

I hate making this next announcement because I think you know how much I LOVE you readers/reviewers. But I gotta say it - there are like, 40 people who have added this story to their favorites, near to 50 who have it on alert. On a good day, I'll get _near_ to half of the favorited people reviewing. Last chapter _eleven_ of you reviewed, most of which were anonymous, so they don't count in the percentages (though they do in my heart 3). You can do better than that! I know you can because you're MY readers and I hold the irrefutable belief that you are the best readers there are. Ever. So throw a writer a bone, y'all. I ain't gots nothin' but your love tuh keeps me goin'.

All right, enough begging. Enjoy. : D

* * *

Spring was creeping slowly into the Narrows, winding its lukewarm grip around the frozen buildings and creeping into dark corners, gently coercing the populace outwards, outwards, back into the sun. It was never one of those music-swelling, rays of golden sunshine, fair maidens dancing, passionate kiss inducing sort of occasions – the most you could say about springtime in the Narrows was that it was nice. That's all. Not beautiful. Not majestic. Just _nice_. It was warmer, things were less gloomy, and though the increase in temperature did have the unfortunate side effect of making the streets reek all the more, it was worth it to know that the thaw was coming on and the long nights spent shivering under blankets that were too thin to properly contain body heat were about to draw to a close for at least a good six months.

The interval between the winter and summer was probably the most peaceful the Narrows ever got. With the increase in sunshine and the pleasant breezes, people found it hard to dwell on their shortcomings. Everything seemed so much less tragic when the streets were full of careless children, running and playing, oblivious to the hardships that lurked just inside of their homes. Maybe it was the light which infused happiness and drove out horrible thoughts – Jack had heard somewhere that lack of sunlight played a large role in low spirits, the lack of it even resulting in an increased suicide rate.

In any case, he knew that springtime had to be his favorite season. Back when he was younger it was always summer the children in his classes longed for, a reprieve of schoolwork and waking up in the early hours of the morning. Jack cared nothing for those luxuries, if you could call them such. Staying home had meant being at the mercy – or the lack thereof – of his father. And besides that, the summer heat was always unbearable in the Narrows. The cramped buildings and overpopulation made it feel as though you were roasting alive. And the heat was so much worse than dry heat; the heat that hung on the Narrows – literally hung, like a heavy and impermeable blanket – was insanely muggy. People over in the Palisades could turn up their A.C. and sit comfortably in their homes, maybe even getting a little chilly and having to go hunt for a blanket; or maybe they'd go lay out by their pool, and whenever things got too hot they'd just take a quick dip in the water of their sprawling man-made paradise to cool down.

The Narrows had none of those conveniences. The blood ran hot in the streets in the summer, both literally and figuratively, and still nobody gave a damn.

But summer was far off, yet, and to Jack it felt like it would never come. Spring was just blooming, still in its early, tepid phases, and the unendurable heat was far off in a distance that was as undefined and hazy as the end of the street Jack was meandering along. For now he was comfortable, enjoying a quiet stroll with that girl at his side. She was licking casually at an ice cream he'd bought her – been able to buy her without hesitation and with the assurance that he had much, much more where that came from. It was a nice feeling. Empowering. There were things he knew he owned, now. Things that were his. His money, his apartment . . . his girl. And she was his, now. He'd claimed her.

"For all the, uh . . . _discrepancies_ you have about my drug money, you sure don't mind me spending it on sweet treats for you."

"Mmpff," she mumbled indistinguishably, crunching down on the outer shell of toasted almonds. After a swallow she continued, "I am still ardently opposed to your choice of business, make no mistake." She waved an ice-cream smeared fingertip at him. "But, it's only one dollar . . . I hardly think the world will collapse because of the George Washington you slipped to that ice cream vendor."

"Haven't you ever heard of the concept 'One dollar can make a difference'?"

"I think it's 'One _person_ can make a difference.'"

Jack shrugged and pulled a stack of bills from his pocket, plucking out a one-dollar bill from the outside layer and then hiding the cash from view – a young boy sitting on a curb was eyeing him unpleasantly, and Jack had lived in this place too long to underestimate the desperate measures a starving child would go to to put food in his stomach for a night.

With a flourish Jack straightened out the bill in front of him.

"This one dollar could very well result in the deaths of ten – no, let's make that _twenty_ – men."

"Get outta here!" that girl scoffed, tossing the now bare ice cream stick into an overflowing dumpster. It bounced off and littered the ground with even more filth.

"Oh, but I'm serious." He paused for dramatic effect, and to organize his thoughts into something coherent, before going on, making every following word up as he went. "Let's say that I . . . . drop this dollar on the ground." To make his point he tossed it aside, watching as it fell into the gutter. Its former crispness was ruined immediately as murky water stained its way through the thin bill, destroying the freshness of it forever. "It stays there for a while. Maybe it gets stuck in a wad of trash and nobody notices it for a day or two. And then, one night, a boy just like that one –" he gestured carelessly back at the little boy who was slowly creeping his way to where Jack had just discarded his one dollar bill. "Notices it. He's hungry. Starving. Hasn't a decent meal in . . . three, maybe four days, if you aren't counting that falafel he stole, which he dropped halfway through because the man he stole it from went after him with a knife and he got scared. So he notices this dollar, and he thinks of all he could do with it." The boy crept up to within ten feet of Jack and that girl, a wild, feral look on his face. "A nice cup of hot cocoa at the gas station. Maybe a cheap glazed donut – now _that_ would be nice. So, he doesn't think twice. He takes it."

At that moment, as if he'd planned it, the little boy darted down and snatched up the bill and then bolted away, his prize clutched in his dirty little fist.

"So," Jack continued on, watching as that girl took turns staring with wonder after the little boy and looking suspiciously up at Jack, as if he'd put on a show like this just for kicks. "So the little boy goes to the nearest drug store and looks around for about an hour – I say an hour because that's how long it takes to pick something out when you've just got one dollar and you don't know the next time you'll have the chance to eat. You gotta make it last, and it's gotta be something . . . something mouth-watering. Something that makes your _eyes_ roll back. Sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and greasy all at once. So the kid searches and searches until he finally picks out something, who cares what. He goes up to the register and slaps down his one dollar and the cashier opens up the money box – and at that moment a man who'd been there all the while flipping through a dirty magazine pulls out a gun from his coat and holds up the store. He'd been waiting for his chance for the box to open, see, because sometimes holding up a cashier and demanding they open it doesn't just fail, it gets them killed. Time is heartbeats, after all."

"And so he shoots the cashier," that girl predicted grimly, "Man number one."

"Ah, not so fast. That would actually result in _two_ of our men – one cashier and one little boy."

"The little boy! But why –"

"Because the kid gets scared, and he acts irrationally. He's so, so hungry, after all. So when he sees the guy holding up the store he thinks 'My food, I gotta get my food and get outta here.' What's the first thing you do when you hear the shout of 'Fire!'? You reach for the thing that's most important, forget if it's in the middle of the flames. So he does, and at that second it's that sweet treat of his. And the gunman shoots the kid without realizing it's just a stupid child – all he feels is someone rushing at him from the side – and then shoots the cashier too because he gets scared after he's made that first shot. He takes his money, including that dollar, and runs.

"Except, a gang who'd been hanging around across the street saw it all happen, and they decide that they could use a little more drug money. So they take off after the gunman and they gun _him_ down, and now the dollar and the rest of the cash is with them. There's three men."

"All right, all right, I'm following you up until now," that girl conceded, putting her hand on her hip. "But honestly, where do the other seventeen men come from? You can't possibly make this work."

"Ye of little faith," said Jack. "Let me finish. So this gang – we're thinking around seven boys from ages fourteen to twenty-five – go in a group together to see their dealer. They go over to Crime Alley, where Petey the drug mule is, and they're so excited to get their blow and about how _lucky_ they were to get the cash that they forget they aren't supposed to be treading those streets – they're on rival territory. So the rival gang sees these punks who they've warned before to stay out of their way, and they act as rationally as any gang member does – I mean, not at all. They get their chains, and guns, and knives, and, uh, kill the seven men, even the fourteen year old, who'd never even had the chance to hear his voice break all the way. Ain't that a crying shame. The seven are killed, and two of the rival gang members, too.

"The surviving search the bodies for goodies and find the money. And of course, instead of splitting it even between them, they argue. The guy who shot the most says it's his because he blew the most brains out –"

"Jack, come on," that girl protested, though she still looked enthralled.

"But another with a bloody face from a knife cut says he should get it because he personally killed the dude holding the cash, even though it got him a slice. They can't agree. Things get heated. Trigger-Happy shoots Knife-Cut and then Knife-Cut's brother and cousin, who come at him. Fifteen down."

"I think you're stretching this a bit far . . ."

"Not at all. Gang violence is a real problem, Louise, you should take it more seriously."

"Oh, honestly!"

"Shush, it's rude to interrupt a story." Jack grinned impishly as she huffed in mock annoyance. "So Trigger-Happy goes to pay off this outstanding debt he's had, and he's thinking about what a lucky break he came across. See, he was so quick to shoot the guys dead to get all the money because he's got in deep with his own dealer. Bit off more than he could chew – or snorted more than he could fit in his nostril, if you will. So Trig goes to his man and says 'Look, I got your money, it's all good'. But it turns out it's not enough – Trig is a hundred short. The dealer could let it go, but he's in a bad mood, so he knifes Trig instead. Sixteen.

"The drug dealer is on his way back home in the wee early hours of the morning when disaster strikes – he hears sirens and sees red, white, and blue flashing lights, and before he thinks he takes off, pulling out his gun as he runs. He fires randomly behind him at the cop car, and they open fire in return. The cop in the passenger seat sinks a bullet into the dealer's chest, but not before the dealer shoots the driver straight in the head, resulting in a car crash that kills driver, passenger, and the criminal in the backseat who'd been arrested for paying an undercover cop for a blow job. The dealer staggers around for a while, bleeding out, before he finally falls in the street and dies.

"Twenty men dead. And it all started with one measly, insignificant dollar." Jack finished solemnly, though a smile tugged at his lips, making them twitch with the effort of suppressing it. That girl was silent, looking up at him thoughtfully. "And you said one dollar couldn't make a difference. You starting to believe?"

"I don't know about one dollar . . ." she said slowly, as if picking her words very carefully. "But I'm starting to believe in the absolute power of one _mind_."

"If you're talking about mine," He leaned in closer to her to whisper conspiratorially, "you don't have to worry. The only minds that make any sort of difference are the minds of . . . say . . . Bruce Wayne, heir apparent to one of the largest undeserved fortunes in the world."

She rolled her eyes at the mention of the spoiled billionaire. "Because _his_ mind is such a wonderful thing? Unlikely. The most he could do is sit in on a few meetings while the real men handled all his accounts. He couldn't even manage to refund the charitable organizations Thomas and Martha Wayne set up for sick and illiterate children residing in impoverished homes such as but not limited to the Narrows! _And_ . . ."

"Whoa, whoa, let's not get _riled_ up."

"Not get riled up? Jack, Lola depended on that money!"

"Lola doesn't have to anymore." He pat the front of his jacket, where his newly acquired money resided. Once he got home he would hide it away safely, or as safe as it could be beneath a trick floorboard, until he deposited it into his mother's bank account to pay off the hospital fees.

She took a deep, calming breath, the flush in her cheeks receding as quickly as it had come. When she cast her eyes on Jack they were gentle, almost admiring. "It just really makes me angry that a guy like Bruce Wayne gets everything handed to him while a guy like you has to resort to crime to get by."

"The, uh, sentiment is appreciated. But you're talking like if I was born with a silver spoon shoved into my mouth I would have turned out any different than he has . . ."

"I think you would have been more or less the same as you are now –"

"You're wrong." That girl fell silent, a little annoyed at having been cut off but waited for him to continue expectantly, nonetheless. A by-product of going to a school where the nuns gave you a rap across the wrist if you talked out of turn, and another if you looked up at them with anything less than benevolent respect. "The only difference that exists between Bruce Wayne, myself, and . . . a murderous crime lord, let's say . . . is the means we possess."

"You're completely different than a crime lord, Jack," that girl protested vehemently. "You care about things, you care about Lola and you care about me . . ."

"And if you and Lola were gone? Listen, you believe way too much in the altruistic goodness that lives deep down inside of every human soul. You have to accept the fact that when you strip a person down of everything they have – money or connections or power or love or safety – you're left with the same desperate, wild animal staring back at you from all sides. You burn down Bruce Wayne's mansion, take the money from him, take away the recognition of his name and his wealth, and throw him into the wilderness, and you bet that he'll be stealing and fighting and lying the same as every other criminal."

As he spoke he thought of the truth of his words; he was not faking the absolute conviction behind them. It was a topic that Jack had dwelt on often when he thought of himself in relation to all the other people in the Narrows. Was he different than them, really? He had chosen to pursue a life of crime in order to get money. Money for a sick sister, surely, but . . . could he lie and say it disgusted him, what he did? Transporting and selling drugs; hustling clients; even plotting to kill? Was he different than anybody else? Was _anybody_ really different from the next person?

"And if Lola and I were gone? You think you'd become . . . what? A monster?"

In a way the devotion and unequivocal certainty of his goodness that rung clear in her voice was touching. Touching, but also plain stupidity. Her affection to him blinded her to the truth of his character, or at least some of it. She saw it as believing in him – he saw it as kidding herself. Still, whatever it was, he was mostly grateful for the gesture. Maybe the fact that somebody did have that delusion about him helped to keep him from falling away from any values he may have left.

"Well, I think that depends on your definition of 'monster'. But . . . you remember that _Fight Club_ quote?"

"'The first rule of Fight Club is 'Never talk about Fight Club'?" she asked sarcastically.

"More like 'It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do . . . anything.'" Jack chewed at his lip. He thought of Peyton Riley and how the loss of her everything had damaged her so deeply. "Deep, huh? On the one hand you have loss, which, obviously, nobody cares for. And on the other you have the, uh, the idea that only through loss can you be freed. Like – like I said about Angelo. You get torn down, but every psychotic belief you've built up about the world comes crashing down too, you know? So in a way it's almost . . . almost like clarity."

There was a touch of reverence to the way he said that last sentence, a brushing of longing that licked at the edges of his words like soft-burning flames. As discerning as she was, he knew she wouldn't miss it, and a part of him was worried that when their eyes met she would reflect total misunderstanding and worry back at him. Surprisingly, that wasn't the case. She was smiling when he glanced over.

"What?"

"You could be great. God, you could be. Maybe I'm only saying that because I adore you. I guess every love-struck teenage girl around the world looks at their boyfriend and thinks 'Man, he could rule the world', even if he's only flipping faux-meat patties at the local Tasty Burger. But you . . ." Her cheeks tinged pink and she looked away, squinting down the street into the sunlight to hide her embarrassment from him. The sun lit up her skin with a blooming glow, her complexion all roses-and-cream. "Anyhow, it's nice to be able to talk to you at all. I hardly remember the last time we saw each other in the daylight. Your hair is a delightfully cute shade of blond when the sun hits it – I nearly forgot."

She reached out to comb her slender fingers through the messy coils of hair. His scalp tingled where she touched him.

"Shouldn't you be out . . . I dunno, doing whatever drug dealers do in the daytime?"

"Uh . . . No. Business is pretty . . . slow . . . lately."

It was slow because Angelo Sabatino and Peyton Riley – his benefactors and main counterparts in the operation to take down Johnny Sabatino – were too busy hidden away together in bed all day to bother calling him in to talk strategy. They'd been at it for a whole week. Things were getting done, sure. Orders were given out to the family members and even though only a week or two had passed, the fazing out of Johnny Sabatino was already put into motion. Only four days ago Johnny had come back to his warehouse to find – nothing. All the drugs for that night had been packed and shipped out already, without his presence. All of his henchmen and family members were nowhere to be found. His phone calls demanding explanations went unanswered. It was a message, from the family to Johnny, and the meaning was clear – You're done. We're tired of you. You had your shot and you blew it. Time to say goodbye, Johnny. It's all over.

Still, even with all of his plans and plotting finally paying off, it was rather unnerving to be the man outside of the curtain, this time.

"Well, I can't say that I'm unhappy about that." That girl shrugged, looking rather pleased. "Maybe this city is finally getting its priorities straight."

"I wouldn't get my hopes up," Jack told her. "Any lack of crime doesn't come from the criminals righting their wrongs, or confessing their sins and repenting. If anything it's . . . just the sunlight. It'll fade. Dark will come again. It always does."

"Pessimist," she groused.

"Idealist," he shot back, and then kissed her. She kissed back happily, confirming that long-standing belief that opposites really do attract.

* * *

Jack had never quite bought into the concept of "making love". To him it had seemed like a sham phrase put forth by over-romanticized movies, targeting the female population in particular to boost their ratings and get more cash-flow. Put a sentimental name on an act that the majority of human beings experienced and which was, in truth, just a base animal reaction, and suddenly you had the girls obsessing over the difference between "sex" and "making love" – and oh, there was a difference, make no mistake about that! Try to think of them as the same thing and you'd find yourself getting none of it, by whatever name you want to call it, for at least a week.

Until recently Jack had held the belief that sex was sex, and nothing else. Something purely primitive, a way to claim somebody as yours. A way to relieve the tension that built into an unbearable frenzy inside.

But if all that was true, then where did this moment fall? This moment after the act, when everything was almost silent save for the steady pattering of raindrops against the side of the building; the quiet croaking of floorboards from above and the groaning of water pipes from somewhere below; the whirring of an electrical appliance in his own apartment? Those everyday noises seemed something different in such stillness, something calming and peaceful. And then there was her . . . Her . . . she deserved to have her own special distinction, a stress on a pronoun that would otherwise be commonplace and unimportant. Was there any other "her" besides Her? He didn't think so, which made it entirely plausible that she should carry the weight of a noun even when Her name was not mentioned. Like when you mentioned God you automatically capitalized the 'h' in 'he'. _He_ doth smite the wicked. And _He _saith to blahbitty blah blah . . . Yeah, he thought it was appropriate.

In any case, if sex was nothing more than sex he didn't think that he would be feeling the way he felt towards her, now. Growing up in the Narrows, surrounded by prostitutes and the common slut that paraded about and gave whatever they had away for little to nothing, had conditioned him to believe that sex was . . . . necessary, sure; great, obviously, if how things felt whenever he took things into his own hands was any indication. But besides that he'd still found it sort of . . . dirty. Common. Vulgar. The distance he'd kept from that girl, refraining from pushing her farther and taking gratification like his body demanded him to, came from the idea that if he did he would be contaminating her. He hadn't realized that wasn't what it was until after the fact, after he realized how _stupid_ he'd been. How could anything involving the quiet, breathless gasps of that girl as she clung to him be anything base?

The thing that surprised him most about this whole making love thing – because this was so much more than just sex. _That_ he'd already established – was the promise in it. Like this could go on forever, a never-ending cycle of absolute serenity. He was almost positive he'd never felt anything like it, in all his life. It had always been day-to-day struggling, treading water with only one good leg. This was _effortless_. He was unguarded; literally and spiritually naked. Not in control, he knew that. The odd thing was, he didn't mind. At any other time being at the mercy of anybody else would drive him insane, until he had no choice but to twist the situation to his own liking. He didn't want to do that with her. She saw him helpless, held him as he trembled, kissed him as he cried out. She pushed him backwards when he tried to lead and let him know that this, this thing they were doing, meant that sometimes it was necessary to let go of control, let somebody else take the reins. And it was in those moments that he understood completely that every belief he'd ever held about power was warped; because was there anything better or worse than realizing, with the girl you adored hovering above you with parted lips and hooded eyes, that you had none of it?

Before he'd slept in her bed, before he'd rested his head against her bare chest for an entire night, before he left in the morning without showering so as to keep the scent of her hanging on him like some supernal perfume, he had figured he knew everything there was to know about her. Like he had some great insight into the complicated recesses of her mind, or something. But now . . .

Now he knew that she mumbled in her sleep, just a soft sighing of garbled words that made no sense whatsoever. Sometimes she laughed, a light hiccup of hilarity that would make him jump as he laid sprawled out beside her. She woke early in the morning, checking on Lola first before climbing into the shower for a full forty minutes and then returning to the room in just her towel to battle with her tangled mess of curls. The whole ritual lasted at least an hour and a half, if her hair was behaving, and Jack would lay, half asleep and half amused, on the still-warm bed.

He knew that she wore a pair of navy blue underpants with frayed edges and white music notes whenever she had to play a piano piece in music class. For luck, she said. At night she would undress in front of him as she spoke in a low, rapid hush about her day. The things she'd done, what her and Lola had talked about, the lab report in Biology that she didn't have an inkling how to complete, and who the hell cared about how many neutrophils there were in a blood sample, anyway? She never wanted to hear about his drug deals, or whose body he'd helped haul to the river with bricks tied around his ankles, but that was all right, because he'd rather not tell her anyway.

He knew that she kept a shoe box decorated with drawn-on daisies tucked away beneath of the bed, and it was full of letters with a run-of-the-mill P.O. box return address – letters from her father, sent to a metal box in the middle of nowhere, where Congressman Whatsit went once a month to gather the only communication he and his daughter shared. Jack knew she hated him; she loved him; she needed him. Knew that she'd cried in the shower the night she pawned the golden jungle music box, her most treasured possession, and he could hear the notes of the tune it played carried on the steam that slithered out from underneath of the bathroom door that night.

He knew she spoke French very well. She'd sit up late on Sunday nights studying for tests that she'd put off until last minute, going obsessively over conjugations and verb tenses until he was certain that he'd never get _mourrai, mourras, mourra, mourrons, mourrez, mourront_ out of his head.

"I'm graduating in a couple months." Her soft voice floated up and hung suspended in the air. With a thought-process that was decidedly more sluggish than usual, Jack wondered where the time had gone. Was he really supposed to be graduating from high school at this time? Had he been with the mob for so long?

But then understanding set in and he realized that she was a grade above him in school. Of course, he'd forgotten. Though basically the same in age (she was a good four months older), he had started class a whole year later than she. He'd only just moved to the Narrows the year he was supposed to start school, and he had a sneaking – more like blatant – suspicion his mother and father rather forgot about him in their depression at losing their house, and their former lives.

She traced circles over his naked chest, her body curled up against him and her hair in his face. It tickled his nose, but his limbs were too heavy to make an effort to brush the strands away. "You'll come, won't you? It'll be a boring ceremony but . . . I'd like you there. Lola too, if she's . . . up to it."

The unspoken words "if she's still alive" hung in the air. Everything was going Jack's way, it seemed, except for the thing he had thought he could mend once he was in control of his life, his assets, and his feelings for that girl. Now, those three things were taken care of. He was more grounded than he had ever been. And still Lola got sicker. Still her skin paled and her lips cracked. Her eyes were sunken so blackly her face resembled a skull more than a human. Even the lightest of touches sent a shiver of pain down her spine, and it was almost impossible for her to walk. The treatments at the hospital were so expensive, draining Jack of everything he'd earned and what he would earn, and yet it would be worth it if they helped. But they weren't helping.

The last time he'd gone to the hospital with Lola the doctor had told him in no uncertain terms that it was time to give up. Pull the plug on his hope that his sister would live.

"_Lola has survived so much longer than anybody expected. Truthfully it was more her own will than anything we did for her. But now I think we have to accept that everything we've tried has failed, and even the sort of strength Lola has cannot last forever. Our treatments have been unsuccessful. An almost endless round of chemotherapy, radiation, and numerous blood transfusions_ _have been insufficient to help her recover_. . ._ Your sister is dying, son. There's nothing more we can do. It's only a matter of time before her organs begin to shut down, and once that process begins . . ."_

The words were meant to be caring, sympathetic, but they were cloaked with the false sort of practiced understanding and compassion that all doctors wore – a mask that showed a human being while underneath they were nothing more or less than polished steel, a robot in a doctor's coat.

"_The treatments are not working. They only make her limited time a painful burden. You need to focus more on making her comfortable for the remainder of her time here. We have a grief counselor on staff . . ."_

As if a stranger with flowery words about heaven and the never-ending love of God and the Lord Jesus Christ could ever assuage his grief, the grief of that girl, once Lola was gone. He had a feeling only a cement truck full to the brim with heavy and quick-drying acceptance could fill the gaping hole that Lola's death would punch through his chest.

"_There must be something more you can do. You're a doctor, you can't just give up, you can't just let her die. What about a bone marrow transplant? I'll be the donor, I'll give her my marrow, even the whole bone if you need it. Cut them out of me and give them to her if you have to, I don't care –"_

"_You're not a match, son, I'm sorry. We tested you a long time ago, don't you remember?"_

Not a match. Despite his best efforts, all he could do for Lola was not enough. Even at the most rudimentary genetic level, Jack let his sister down.

"_What about her? Louise? You could test her, see if she's a match . . ."_

"_It doesn't quite work that way. Tissue types are inherited, like eye color or hair color, you see? The chances of finding a donor in a person unrelated to you is slim, and the chance that Lola would be the first on the list to receive their donation is even slimmer."_

"_Well you could still try. You believed that it was more likely than not that I would be a donor since I'm her brother, and you were wrong. You could be wrong that Louise isn't a match. Test her. Test everybody in this goddamn hospital, and if anybody even comes close to a match I'll pay them –"_

"_What you're describing is quite illegal, son, and I assure you even if it wasn't it'd be quite out of your price range. An allogeneric bone marrow transplant would cost you at least one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, if not more. Try to get a hold of yourself."_

That girl would have given everything in her body for Lola, much like Jack would have. And she did get herself tested. She wasn't a match, either. But still Jack wasn't giving up. So the transplant cost almost two hundred thousand dollars – Angelo and Riley were closer than ever to taking over the Sabatino organization, and he could get his money. Angelo and a few other cousins who were better at business even went so far as to cut deals with Carmine Falcone, his cooperation in exchange for a partnership once Johnny was out of office. Johnny Sabatino was almost completely cut off from Gotham's Underground, and he was beginning to know it, beginning to get desperate. It was only a matter of time before Jack sat at Angelo's right hand, with more money than he could even dream of at his disposal. And then Lola could have whatever procedures she wanted, enough for her and eighteen other sick kids just like her . . . More than she needed, until she got well again.

"Don't think about it, Jack," that girl murmured against his throat. "Don't think. Just hold me."

The request was a simple one, as easy as breathing but with a far better payoff. Her touch drained him of any resentment or bad feelings he harbored, until there was nothing left except her, filling every corner of him with the brightness she carried with her wherever she went.

And again, in the stillness afterward, Jack marveled over how very peaceful everything was, unaware that it was the last moment of true comfort he would ever experience.


	18. Chapter 18

**A/N:** So guys, this chapter is getting back on track after last chapter's momentary interlude. It had a point, though I bet you guys thought it didn't. Anyone who was able to discern that point gets a prize! Via message board, of course. Thanks to everyone who threw me a bone and gave me a review, especially the ones who did it for the first time! I love new reviewers, they assure me that my story is still getting other people interested.

This one . . . . well, I'll let you figure that out for yourself. After this chapter there will be TWO left before Part II. I've had a lot of questions about the sequel, but there won't be one – it's still the same story. Yeah. It'll be generously – or obnoxiously – long. Whichever. I'm still playing around with the beginning of Part II and I want to ask you guys some questions about it, but not now. Maybe next chapter.

Alright, please, PLEASE review on this one!

* * *

There is a certain feeling of dread a person gets when they know their own death, or the death of another, is near. It's more than the prickle at the back of your neck; more than just the rising of fine hairs on your arms. It's the twist in your gut and the tightening of your chest; it's the heaviness of your legs with every footstep and the shaking of your fingers, even when stationary. You can't banish dread; it's not an emotion that comes and goes easily with the passing of minutes. Dread is built up into a frenzy inside of you, until you feel nearly sick with it. It cannot be dispelled by mere concentration or distraction. The only thing that can truly end dread is the end of the cause of the dread itself. Only then can the sweet, freeing release come.

Sometimes, however, the situation causing the dread can end in only a few ways, one of which means the end of life altogether.

Jack encountered this feeling the second Angelo Sabatino called him on his cell phone and asked him down to Johnny's warehouse. The fact that he was at Johnny's warehouse, without Johnny there, should have been cause for jubilation in the man's voice, proof that they'd finally won. Yet there was none. There was only a sort of strange, strained rigidness.

That girl was at the hospital with Lola when he left, after what felt like a whole thirty minutes of standing around hoping one or both of them would return so he could see their faces before he went off. There was something about the phone call that was sinister to him; boding ill for not only himself, but for Angelo as well. Something had gone wrong. Something wasn't right. His gun felt heavy in his pocket, and he was aware of every step he took that brought him closer to where Johnny Sabatino had once ruled, certain in the belief that he could not fall.

At the entrance to the warehouse Jack stopped and listened, desperate for any sign that things were contrary to his belief – he heard only silence. No cheers or laughter or drunken singing, as there would sure to be if the remaining Sabatinos were celebrating a successful takeover.

The dread hung on his limbs, tried to force him backwards away from the door. But something else, maybe fate, maybe Death itself, was pulling him forwards. The latter force was stronger, and finally Jack took the plunge and entered. The rusty door screeched as he entered, something that had never happened before. Was it an ill omen, he wondered? And then, just as the thought flashed through his mind, he snorted at his own foolishness and steadied his steps as he moved forward.

It was dark inside, and Jack passed through the main supply room, set up with numerous tables and chairs for sorting the drugs when they were received and with several docking stations for shipment trucks. It was dark, proof enough that the feeling of unease he'd carried with him was not unwarranted. Taking out his gun, Jack continued into the nearest of the offices, checking each room as he went on. The first, which Johnny used as his own personal space, was as empty and dark as the warehouse floor. The pretentious leather furniture was shrouded and shadowy; any number of people could be crouching behind them, waiting for their chance to spring up and shoot him while his back was turned. Somehow, though, Jack doubted this was the room – Johnny would hate getting blood and brain all over his carpet.

The next two, one which served as a conference room and housed a spacious oval table surrounded by mismatched chairs and another which was exclusively for those who were related to the Sabatinos to kick back and relax after a long night, were equally empty. There were only two spaces left, not counting the two toilets that branched off of the main entrance office, plus one storage area that was padlocked and loaded with ammunition and weaponry. The first was a "reception" area, never used by the Sabatinos, and where most of the stuff nobody knew what else to do with – things that might be incriminating – was stashed until a fire was found to burn the evidence in. This, too, was padlocked and inaccessible. So it was the last room, Door Number Three. The room where the common thugs and dealers were allowed to take a cup of coffee and sit in patchy recliners to watch one hazy and ancient television. That was where Angelo Sabatino could be found. No doubt in the company of somebody else.

He was just approaching the door to that office when his foot rolled down onto uneven ground, fibers breaking and crunching beneath of the sole of his tennis shoes. He lifted up his leg and saw a thousand tiny pieces of glass, some crushed into a glittering powder. With eyes that already expected the worst, Jack followed the trail of glass over into a shadowy corner that had escaped his attention. He'd been so focused on that final door, the room that must house whoever had brought him here and for whatever reason, that he'd forgotten to keep scanning his surroundings.

At the end of that trail of glass there was a shattered glass coffee table. And on the ground next to that coffee table, her face pressed into the ground and her body unmoving, lay the unmistakable form of Peyton Riley. Her light hair stood out in the darkness, and he wondered that he could have overlooked her.

Jack was certain when he looked at her that first time, so still and surrounded by shards of glass, that she was dead. As it turned out, he was wrong; whether that would be to his advantage was still conjectural. When he rolled her over and took her in his arms he found that she was breathing shallowly, a pulse flickering beneath of his fingers as he pressed them to her neck. But though alive, she wasn't unharmed. Pushing back a large lock of matted hair from the side of her face which must have hit the table he saw the extent of the damage – the right side of her face was a bloody mess of what it had been, the features distorted and sliced up almost beyond recognition. The cheekbone was bruised heavily and malformed, obviously broken. And her eye . . . her eye was gouged beyond any sort of salvation. She'd never see out of it again.

The good side of her face – the one which had escaped being slammed into a breakable object – was bruised, reminiscent of the days when Jack had first saw her in that butcher's shop, before any of this . . . He knew at first glance that this was the work of Johnny Sabatino. He had managed, somehow, to strike back. Without influence, without hope of recovering the respect or position he'd once had, he'd taken all of the impotent rage he felt and focused it on one goal – to bring down the wife who had caused his downfall, and the cousin who had betrayed his trust.

Either Angelo was dead already or he would be soon, Jack didn't know. He only knew that if he stayed a minute longer in that warehouse, he'd be dead as well, and that . . . just wasn't an option. The only thing to decide now was whether or not to take Riley's limp body into his arms and transport her to the nearest hospital. No doubt it would lay a very obvious target on his back . . . But wasn't it there already? Didn't Angelo call him here tonight, probably at Johnny's gunpoint? Still . . . . could he face that girl knowing that he might have saved the life of a woman – not innocent, no, but still a woman – and did nothing?

He had only just decided to reach down and haul Riley out of the path of danger when danger found him. There was a crunch of glass and a quiet chuckle from, behind his back. Jack turned and found himself facing Johnny Sabatino, Angelo in front of him with a gun pressed to the back of his skull.

"Glad you could make it, Jay . . ." Johnny said, his voice thick. Jack squinted, and was almost pleased to see that something had visibly, and painfully, broken Johnny's nose. It looked like he'd been pummeled in the face with a fire extinguisher. "As you can see, I've put a little party together. The two people who tried to steal my birthright from me. You can tell that things aren't going so well for my wife or my _dear_ cousin." Johnny emphasized his point by jamming his gun into the base of Angelo's skull, jostling his head forward.

Angelo's dark eyes flickered up to Jack, his beaten face broadcasting the struggle he'd gone through and the defeat he'd suffered. Angelo had never been a better fighter, a better mobster, than Johnny. He'd only ever been a better person, and in situations like these, that was never enough. In fact, it meant absolutely nothing.

"See, I knew you had something to do with this bitch," Johnny gestured sharply towards the prostrate form of his dying wife, "from the very beginning. I knew it on that first day when Henry suggested I meet you. But you did good at lyin', at hidin' it. I figured I could get somethin' outta you if I had Angelo here pretend to be your best friend. But I didn't know that Angelo had switched sides a long time ago."

Johnny shot a glare of loathing at his cousin, formerly the man he'd trusted above all others. "You shoulda known better, Ang. You shoulda known that the bitch was playin' you. Did you think she _loved_ you? Did you _fall_ for it?"

He laughed harshly, his hand swinging back and then slamming the butt of his gun into the base of Angelo's skull with staggering force. Angelo fell to his knees immediately, his eyes rolling in their sockets from the violence of the blow. Jack stood helpless, his own gun in his hand. He could shoot well, but Johnny . . . Johnny was faster. And there was still so much to live for.

"Ain't nobody gonna love you, Angelo. You're nothin'. Just some stupid wannabe mobster who can't even remember how to load a gun."

Jack didn't know if Angelo could hear Johnny insult him; didn't know if the sharp-edged comments sunk deep inside of the man's chest. But he didn't care. Jack felt enraged enough for the both of them.

"If you're gonna kill me, then do it quick, John," Angelo slurred, almost drunkenly. "I ain't got all day – God's waitin'. And Peyton . . I gotta meet her at the gates."

"You ain't goin' to heaven, Ang. Traitors like you burn in hell. But I ain't denying that you'll find that worthless whore somewhere down there. I hope you're roasted together." Johnny smirked down at the helpless form of his cousin and then back to Jack, who stood motionless, waiting. "Besides, I ain't killin' you. Jay is."

Jack's grip tightened around his gun, as did Johnny's, and the two of them leveled off.

"You're gonna kill Angelo, Jay, and then you're gonna run. And I'm gonna tell my family – those stupid fuckers who thought that they could overthrow me – that you were workin' for Falcone this whole time. That you were tryin' to bring down the Sabatinos – all of us – from the inside, so that Falcone could take the Narrows. That you killed Angelo and Peyton and tried to kill me, but I fought you off. They won't believe me at first, but once they found you ran, they will. Once they find your bullet in Angelo's head. And then I'm gonna take back what was stolen from me." Johnny grimaced. "You deserve to die. And I'll find you, one day. But unless you wanna go in the next ten seconds, you'll do what I told you."

Jack said nothing, but his mind was working furiously inside of his skull. He could fight – would it do anything? His eyes flickered to take in his surroundings, searching for possible weapons. A large shard of glass on the floor? No, too long to pick up and then too far to plunge, Johnny would shoot him first. His own gun? Shoot Angelo in the shoulder, where it wouldn't kill, and when Johnny was distracted by his annoyance shoot him in the head? Maybe, but –

He waited two seconds too long. Johnny fired his gun; Jack heard the shot and felt the bullet sink into his free arm, and his eyes swam from the pain of it. He swayed, dangerously close to stumbling to his knees. But he had to keep standing, or it'd be so easy to be killed, and that girl . . .

"Shoot him now or the next one will be between your eyes."

Blinking furiously to clear his vision, Jack steadied himself and raised his gun, pointing it at Angelo. The man had saved his life over and over again. In the haze of pain from the bullet sunk deep in his upper arm, Jack saw Angelo as he'd first really seen him, sitting shivering on a pile of skids with a cigarette in between his lips. And then at his apartment, laughing over a glass of vodka and a handful of cards. And then stumbling into bed while Jack pried the cigarette from his hand, to keep him from setting the bed on fire when he passed out.

He liked Angelo Sabatino. Maybe the only man he'd ever liked, would ever like.

But he liked himself more.

"Try not to hit my good side, eh Jay?" Angelo said, and then turned the unscarred part of his face away, displaying only a thick and uneven mark which disfigured him. The flat line of his voice carried a grim acceptance. He cared nothing for life when the thought of a world without the woman he adored loomed in front of him. Jack could tell him that she was still alive . . . but that would change nothing, not for him. "I wanna look pretty at my funeral."

In a way Jack thought that when he fired, it'd be just like the first time he ever pulled a trigger – a game of Russian roulette. Three empty rounds and three full, but the one he got would be the empty one, of course. Even though it was his gun and he knew different, knew that each one held a bullet which would shatter the skull of the hardest heads around, he still half expected that cylinder to click past an empty round.

It didn't. Even shaking from pain the way he was, Jack managed to aim steadily. The bullet hit right above the eyebrow, cutting through a section of scarred skin. It was over quickly; blood spurted out of the wound in messy, irregular splatters of skin and skull, and Angelo Sabatino tumbled backwards, his legs folded beneath him. Dead before he hit the floor, a mushroom of blossoming scarlet spilling over and streaking past the sharp angles of his familiar face. Jack stood, his gun pointing at the spot where, just one second before, the only friend he'd ever had had existed, lived. An instant of pain and selfish decision-making and he was . . . . gone.

Jack took one breath, and then he ran.

* * *

His adrenaline took him three-fourths of the way home without a problem, and it wasn't until he was nearly at his building that he began to stumble. The shot wasn't deadly, obviously, except for the fact that he'd allowed himself to bleed out for ten minutes, his heart pumping viciously and increasing the blood loss as he ran. It took effort to stagger up the stairs he could usually take two, three at a time. His limbs felt heavy and his head oddly light, as if at any minute he might just float off into space, or else fall away in a dead faint.

Jack didn't think his pride could take any more tearing down today. Running away from Johnny Sabatino had been enough, but fainting . . . .

As soon as he got onto the landing for his floor he pulled out his cell phone and dialed a button he very rarely used. It rung four times before somebody picked up.

"Mistuh Jay, where you at?" Willie's frenzied voice broke out over the line. The man was panting with fear and exertion. "Missus Riley –"

"Johnny's got her, at the warehouse. She's hurt, I think she's dying. Or already dead, I don't know. And Angelo . . . it's all over. All of it. It's all over."

All of that work, the money he'd been promised, his hope for Lola's recovery. Gone. As gone as Angelo Sabatino was gone, irreversibly and forever. And for what? For what? It had so much promise, so much . . . It had been such a good plan. It had been working, that plan. His father had always been wary of the plans he might make, he remembered that. He'd nearly beat him to death in his drunken fear that Jack might, one day, plan to destroy him. He'd told his father he never planned, and he used to believe . . . He used to believe it got you nowhere. What had happened to that? What had happened to him?

"Ain't nothing over jus' yet Mistuh Jay. I got Missus Riley. She gwoina live. But she got huwt real bad . . . the doctuh is wit' her now."

So Riley was alive, somehow. But when she awoke she would find everything she'd worked for dashed into a thousand pieces, and Angelo . . . . Not that she would care about his death. To her he'd been nothing but a hapless pawn, to throw into battle in front of her. No doubt she had thought that Angelo would take the brunt of Johnny's wrath and she would walk away unharmed. She might even have taken Angelo to that warehouse, hoping . . . what? That Johnny would kill him, and she would escape to tell the teary tale, at which point the other Sabatinos would declare absolute vengeance and hunt Johnny down? It was possible.

"What happened, Willie? How did this happen? She was supposed to be watched. Both of them, Angelo and Peyton . . . they were supposed to have all the Sabatinos . . ." Jack stopped to catch his breath as dizziness sent his vision spinning. With his good shoulder he leaned heavily against the doorframe to his apartment. His head swam, and he almost felt as though he could hear the ghost of Angelo's laugh, like it was haunting him. The man he'd killed, laughing at him now as he could hardly stand up straight.

"Are you awlright, Mistuh Jay? Mistuh Jay?"

"I'm fine, fine. Just . . .What happened? How did Johnny get to them?"

"Her 'n Mistuh Anguhlo got into duh car wit' Mistuh Riley. 'Dair drivuh mustuh been workin' fo' Johnny. I kin't find Mistuh Riley. I think . . . I think he got killed."

With shaking fingers, Jack wiped the sweat away from his eyes. He left a streak of blood across his forehead, and he heard Angelo's laughter grow louder in his ears, until it was nearly deafening. Was he going crazy? He hadn't had a choice . . . And Angelo had . . .

"You gotta get yuhself outta here, Mistuh Jay. Take yo' gal and yo' lil' sis and leave. Ain't nothin' left fo' you here. I gots your sixty thousand. You get it tomorruh and you get on out. Get out 'n nevuh come back."

Sixty thousand . . . That wouldn't pay for Lola's treatments. But was there any other choice, now? Willie was right, he couldn't stay here. He had to take what he could get and leave. But it was such a small amount in comparison to what was needed . . . She couldn't get the bone marrow transplant even if she did find a donor. She couldn't get better. It was over. It was all over.

"I'll come to get it tomorrow,." Jack winced as he pushed himself upright, another gut-twisting pain shooting through his left arm and traveling down the length of his spine. He had to dig that bullet out and fix himself up . . . And going to the hospital wasn't an option.

"Awlright Mistuh Jay."

His apartment was oddly quiet when he let himself in, peripherally aware of how horrid he looked soaked in blood, shaking, pale. The idea was that if he could slip past that girl and get into the bathroom to clean himself up, he might therefore escape the horrible confrontation that was sure to follow once she saw him in this state. The explanation he would have to give . . . but he could not tell her the truth, that was certain. That he had killed his friend, that he was a murderer, that they, all of the Sabatinos or at least Johnny and a few choice thugs, would be after him . . . He'd fix himself up, take that fifty thousand, put ten into finding themself some new digs in some other city, and use the rest for Lola. And then he'd get a job and toil away until . . . Until what? He didn't know. Not yet. But he had to leave.

First, though, he had to get the bullet out of his arm. That girl was in Lola's room – his parents' old room. Quiet murmurs were drifting to him, indistinguishable. She didn't get up to come see him when he entered, and for that he was grateful. It gave him time to slip into the bathroom and shut the door behind him. But once he was inside he didn't know quite what to do. Her voice was louder in there, only one thin wall separating the bathroom from the room where she knelt at Lola's bedside. She was saying something, reciting it in a hushed undertone, as if she didn't want to be overheard.

"Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name."

His reflection was guilty as he stared back at himself, the skin a shocking white and that streak of blood smeared across his brow. The shirt he wore was a bloody mess, covered in sticky scarlet that was fast-turning an ugly, muddled brown.

"Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven." Lola coughed. A fitful sound. Pitiful, yet inspiring fear and disgust. Soothing murmurs of compassion and affection filled the bathroom, and Jack began to shake. "Give us this our daily bread, and forgive us for our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us . . ."

The words slithered through the walls, the crack in the door; filled the tiny room with holy words, sinless prayers. They felt like fire on his skin, stroking his flesh with knives fashioned from guilt. Forgiveness . . . Did he want it? Did he need it? Had he sinned? His mind told him he had not, but that girl . . . What would _she_ say?

"And lead us not into temptation . . . "

The faucet screeched as he turned the water on in an effort to drown the words out. It spurted out irregular bursts of water before finally evening out, a steady, thick stream. Jack plunged his hand underneath. He stained the sink bloody red.

"But deliver us from evil."

The mildewy wallpaper wilted around him, peeling off in front of his eyes. The whole bathroom was melting around him, swallowing him, sucking him into . . . Where? Where did he belong? Hell? Did he deserve Hell after what he'd done? Angelo . . .

"For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. . ."

He had no power, no power over anything, anymore. Why had he thought he could take it? Why had he thought he could control things? He used to know . . . He used to understand that nothing could be controlled. But Riley had given him hope; she had planted a seed of ambition inside of his heart and the mob had nurtured it as it grew, consuming him.

He felt like he was drowning, sinking beneath a sea of blood. Angelo's blood, Riley's blood, Bill's blood, the blood of the classmates that he'd beat into pulp without remorse. And the blood that was not his fault, but still stained his hands and his mind – his father's, his mother's, Lola's, that girl's . . . it was all there. His entire life was defined by blood.

"Amen."

His legs gave out beneath him, dizziness wrapping his vision in a fuzzy darkness. Pinpricks of light swam in front of him. He was still conscious, still there, but his senses seemed to be blotted out completely, nothing left except a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

He tried to get a hold of himself. The coldness of his wet hands brought his vision back when he rubbed them over his eyes. Just enough to see that the bathroom had stopped folding in on itself – had it ever been? Enough to hear that the prayer had stopped, and footsteps were approaching the bathroom door. The tip of her foot tapped against the old, rotten wood.

"Jack, you want some pizza or something? I can heat it up for you."

Was she talking about food? How could she be so nonchalant at a time like this? How could she speak so evenly after quoting those religious words, after they had so recently passed her lips? Lips that had never sinned on their own, without his help.

He was losing it. Whether it be the blood loss or the horror of his situation – all hope gone, and Angelo murdered by his hand, and Riley's obvious beauty ruined forever – he didn't know, he didn't care. He was losing it.

"Jack? Are you all right?"

The water was still running, an arrhythmic flow that blotted out the silence and almost cloaked the sharp gasping that he supposed must be his breathing. That girl knocked again. Said his name. She sounded worried, now. The door didn't really lock. She'd barge in on him, soon. Again the thought of 'Get out the bullet' crossed his mind, stupidly. With far more effort than moving usually cost him, Jack backed himself up against a wall and reached out to tug up the sleeve of his shirt. It bunched up at his elbow joint, but the bullet hole was far above that. Unsuccessful.

Again she said his name, told him she'd come in if he didn't answer her. His arm felt useless, hanging limply at his side. When his father had come at him with that two-by-four he'd delivered a giant, glancing blow to this very arm. It had ached for weeks, just like it did now. A sharpness that he remembered well.

"I'm fine." His voice cracked on the 'fine'. It sounded weak; juvenile, almost. Frightened. Covered with sin. Like a child who had just gotten caught with his hand covered in custard that had been meant for desert, and who said it hadn't been him who ate it. It needed to sound more convincing; stronger; more assured. Like himself. "Don't –" Not assured enough. Try again. "Don't come in."

She did anyway, because of course he'd forgotten who he was talking to – she knew him better than anybody he'd ever known. She could tell something was wrong. He wanted to yell out for her to get away, to stay away from him. Like he could somehow pollute her; transfer his sin to her through the pores of her fair skin.

Her cry of horror was worse than he'd imagined it would be – hoarse and sharp and streaked with grief and immeasurable distress. In an instant she was down beside him, lifting up his shirt, her cool hands groping over the sticky skin of his chest and abdomen in a hurried frenzy. She paused over his heart, searching for an entrance wound which was not there. When she found his torso unmarked she let out a shaky breath, a half-sob.

"Jack . . ." Her breath hitched as she followed the dark stains of blood to his arm, where she trailed her fingers over his wound. He hissed, and her lip trembled. "You need to go to the hospital. You've lost so much blood . . ."

"The bullet . . ." he grappled at his torn sleeve again, but she pushed his hand away.

"Don't be stupid. It's – I read somewhere that trying to get a bullet out can cause more problems than leaving it in. Besides, that's a call for the doctors to make. Here, get up."

She reached for him, hooking her arm around his unmarked one and trying to lift him.

"No, I'm not going to the hospital." It would bring too much attention to him; alert Johnny and the Sabatinos to the fact that he was still in the Narrows, still in Gotham . . . And then there was the issue of money. He'd lost his income. Lola . . . she needed it all. Nothing could be spared on him.

"Don't be ridiculous . . ."

"I'm not going. Stop tugging at me."

"Jack, if you –"

"Shut _up_!"

Lola stirred in the adjacent room. He had thought that once he got that girl to stop rambling on about going to the hospital, the unbearable din would stop pressing in on his ears. But it wasn't so. In the absence of spoken words, her judgement lay thick on his bloody skin. He was a monster, and now she saw it, and . . . . He couldn't hide his iniquities from her now. Not when they were smeared across him, painted in his own blood.

His breathing was ragged and guilty, it felt. It filled every corner of the small room, pressing up against the mildewy walls. How had it come to this? Him lying bloody up against the very wall he'd had her pressed to, months, maybe a year, before? All of those choices that he'd made, supposing that things would be made _better_. . . . all of that ridiculous _planning_. It was over. All of it, every bit of the past, every hope for the future, it was all gone.

"I can't go to the hospital. That's not an option. Don't mention it again." He looked down at his scarlet arm. Her hand was still resting on his bicep, her pale skin tinged crimson.

"All right."

She conceded easily. It was obvious that she knew he'd done something unforgivable, something horrific. Something that would make even her steadfast devotion crumble into dust all around him. He couldn't tell her; he didn't think the words would form in his mouth. _I killed a man. I killed Angelo. I killed him. I killed him. I killed him. _It didn't feel real, and already that hollow feeling was starting to creep up on him again, trying to blot out the reality of it all and coat it so that it became more manageable. He had always figured that he'd murder eventually, but never . . . never what? Somebody he liked? Should that make such a difference? It was his life on the line, friend or foe, and somebody had to die. It couldn't be him. It couldn't be him, with a dying sister and a girl who . . . She needed him too, didn't she? Who did she have, besides him?

He had to do it, that was all. And he wouldn't feel badly about it anymore. He killed Angelo Sabatino, put a bullet through the once-crushed skull and saw the brains he'd both underestimated and admired, once, splatter onto old, dirty pavement. That was the truth, but it was also the past, and he couldn't dwell on it now. He was stronger than this, stronger than letting a bit of blood and guts get in the way of cold rationale and logic. The truly important things.

First and foremost, he had to make sure he didn't bleed to death on his bathroom floor.

"Do you have anything to stop the bleeding?" he asked her, pooling all of his strength together to stand. It was easier when he wasn't breathing so heavily from running and from pure shock. The pain was a dull throbbing that barely registered, now.

She rose up with him and thought for a moment. "I . . .yes. I have a first aid kit. It has gauze and bandages and something for snake bites – but of course you don't need that right now."

"Just go get what you have and meet me in the kitchen."

She seemed reluctant to leave his side and stood hovering by, staring at his arm as if it were possible for it to fall right off.

"I haven't got an unlimited amount of blood, you know."

She turned and left immediately, clearing the way for him to walk back into the kitchen and take out a chair. With careful fingers he unbuttoned his shirt and slid the fabric from his shoulders. On the left the sleeve stuck, stiff with drying blood and sticky with the wet. He peeled the cloth from his wounded skin with a grimace and then threw the ruined piece of fabric onto the floor in a bundle.

That girl rustled around in her room for around two minutes after Jack had finished undressing, and when she reappeared she carried a large, white plastic box in her hands, stamped with a large red cross on the top.

"I, uh . . . sort of stole it from school." She shrugged and then went to the sink, wetting a cloth. "I figured they wouldn't miss it and as soon as I realized you were dealing . . . I thought that it'd be good to have it around, just in case. They told us how to deal with gunshot wounds in a health class I took, but it was only minor care stuff. Like until you could get the person to an ambulance."

"I can't go to the hospital. So it's all up to you."

She pursed her lips as she knelt in front of him, dabbing at the areas around his wound. He flinched at the first contact and then relaxed into it, never so much as twitching even after she coated the cloth with a bit of hydrogen peroxide, reaching around back of his arm to clean the blood there, as well.

"I think . . . Do you feel this?" She ran her finger over the back of his arm and a shock of pain, similar to the one he experienced when she touched his bullet wound, went through him. He nodded. "I think it's an exit wound. That's good, I think. That means that the bullet went right through the side of you arm here. Nothing to remove. Or at least, I don't think so."

"Well, peachy. Now my dreams of being a professional bowler can be realized, after all."

"This isn't funny, Jack. You went off and got yourself_ shot_. You're lucky I haven't killed you myself for putting me through this . . ." The gauze was tight when she wrapped it around his arm, making sure to put two absorbent cotton patches on both the front and back. Entrance, exit. "When I saw you lying on the floor like that, bloody . . . I thought you were dying."

Jack said nothing, biting at his lip. The dim fluorescent lighting of his apartment was so unerringly _real_. It contrasted so sharply with how he'd felt as he ran here, his head swimming dizzily and blood coating his body, Angelo's laughter ringing in his ears . . . Now that girl knelt by his side, tending to his wounds, and the light lit up every dirty crevice in the floor and on the walls. This wasn't a dream world, or even Hell – this was real life, now. Things were sharp and solid and the walls didn't melt in on him. And already Angelo was fading, covered up by the flood of fluorescent light.

"We need to leave." That girl looked up at him as she applied surgical tape to the gauze wrapped around his arm. Her eyes were wary. "Tomorrow. You need to pack your things. We have to get out of here."

"And go where?" Why was she being so calm? Her expression had hardly even changed. So many times she overreacted to the littlest things, and when he was finally serious about something . . . "The Palisades? Got a room with a view for us or something?"

She stood and went to wash her hands free of his blood, as if she did this sort of thing all the time. It wasn't until she went to clean under her nails that she doubled up and vomited into the sink. Jack sat motionless, picking at a stray string of gauze as she retched. He thought of her question. There were a thousand places they could go, and really, why hadn't they before? There were slums in every big city. Chicago, maybe. Atlanta, Georgia. Maybe even California. Jack had heard that they had some good gang activity over there. Maybe he'd join up. Or maybe he'd just go around from city to city, robbing convenience stores and people coming back from the ATM.

That girl rinsed out her mouth and wiped at her eyes, and then washed her hands again.

"I hate blood. I really do. You and Lola . . . I feel like it's all I ever see. And I can smell it. This place reeks of it." She wiped her hands off on her jeans and then grabbed a glass from the cupboard, pouring Jack a glass of orange juice that, he was sure, was far past its expiration date.

"Here," she said, handing the glass to him. A layer of foam and pulp floated on the top."You'll need to drink a lot of liquid and stuff high in . . . vitamin C or something. To get your blood count back up."

"Thanks for fixing me up, Doc," Jack muttered into his glass. He finished the whole glass in one large gulp and then wiped at his mouth. The juice had a sour, acidic taste, long past the date it was supposed to be tossed out, that stuck on his tongue unpleasantly. "But I wasn't lying when I said that we need to go. Start packing tonight."

"We can't leave, Jack."

"We can't stay."

"Well we can't leave. Lola's too sick. You can't move her. She's . . . she's not doing good. I think that her organs might be failing. I don't . . . We can't move her. We can't go traveling to a different city right now, not when she might need her doctor at any second. We can't leave."

Jack bent and grabbed the pink-tinged washcloth that she'd used to wipe his blood up with, applying the cleanest portions to clean the rest of his skin off.

"You think I'm treating this like a joke. I'm not. When I tell you we have to leave, we have to leave. You don't know . . . You think that I'm so much better than I am. I've done horrible things. I did a horrible thing tonight, and . . . I did it for her." Jack pointed towards Lola's room, the bloody cloth dangling in his hand.. "I'm getting sixty thousand dollars tomorrow. It's not enough, but that's all there is. I . . . I was stupid. Everything I've done was stupid, but it's too late to take it back. We have to leave."

She pressed her knuckles to her lips, pressed thin into a nervous line. After a few moment's silence she shook her head.

"No. You're gone so often you don't even know how sick she is. She's dying, Jack. She can't even walk. She can't even get up to use the bathroom. You think you're the only one who's made sacrifices, but you're not. I've missed so many days of school that I almost failed four of my classes. If it wasn't for my friend Sydney, bringing me my work, I would have. I wouldn't be able to graduate. I may not be selling drugs, or . . ." She swallowed heavily. "But I've been through a lot. Watching her die . . . And maybe you need to leave right now, but I'm not going. Not until I bury her underneath of that tree. The one she asked us to, in the graveyard. I promised her I would. I'll put her in that grave and then, then we can leave."

Silence fell between them and they stared at one another. A standoff, almost an ultimatum. She hadn't said it, not really, but the unspoken words were hanging in the air between them nonetheless.

_You can leave, if you have to. But if you do, you'll be going alone. _

Could he go, without her? Without Lola? What was the point, even? So Johnny Sabatino was after him . . . but the Sabatinos who aligned themselves with Angelo couldn't be dense enough to believe that he had been a double agent for Carmine Falcone. They would have to find it suspicious that Angelo and Peyton had been attacked on the eve of their takeover. They would have to.

No, Jack reasoned. It just wasn't necessary to leave.


	19. Chapter 19

**A/N:** So last chapter I was a little disappointed with the number of reviews. I mean, still appreciative. But I guess I expected more of a response, what with Jack getting shot and killing someone for the first time. I feel like I'm losing my audience. I know this is long, I just wanted you guys to stick with me! Too much to ask? = /

Anyway, enjoy, and please, please leave a review!

* * *

Lola was dying.

It was not the slow death that had weighed heavily on her shoulders for the past six years of her life, nor a faraway threat that loomed in the distance. It was none of that, anymore. For years, Jack had held the belief that death would wait. That Lola was dying, yes, but that she'd be dying until she grew old and grey and they were _all_ dying.

But Death, as it turns out, is impatient. Jack sat at his sister's bedside and he felt he could feel it, breathing harsh and heavy. It didn't wear a shrouded veil of tattered black cloth. It didn't carry a scythe. In Jack's mind, Death looked like a clown. The same way his sister looked that day not long ago, with her blood smeared up her cheeks and her eyes sunk deep into her skull. That was what Death looked like, and it was so, so fitting. After all, life was just . . . one big joke.

So many things had felt that way since Angelo's body had fallen backwards onto the floor. Things were so sharp, now; so clear and precise. The sounds around him, even in silence, felt as if they were magnified. It was horrible to be in a room without noise, horrible to sit without movement. The weight of reality pressed in on him in those situations, nearly driving him insane.

Sitting beside his sister was like going insane. Or, that's what he imagined it would feel like. At first it was complete, terrified and paralyzed apathy. Then came casual paranoia, like the walls were pushing in, like somebody was forever watching you. Finally, you reached hallucinations. Death sitting at the end of a bed with blood smeared up its cheeks in a smile.

"What – do ya think – heaven – is like?"

She'd asked him this, before. The last time her eyes had flickered open and she'd croaked for pain medication. In the haze just before sleep she had questioned him about heaven, and he had told her that it was a meadow of sweet-smelling flowers, and at the end of that there was an orchard full of trees, abundant in nectarous fruit that tasted like sunlight and wind and flame. It was forever, he'd told her. It was happiness, painlessness, and it was forever.

And now she asked again.

"A beach. It's got one of those lighthouses that look out to sea, and it's always on at night, guiding boats in safely. The waves are always the perfect height, and the sand is never too hot or too rough against your skin. You can bury your toes in it and just . . . watch the sun set. And at night you can lie on the sand and look at the stars, and man . . . there are _thousands_. And each one is the soul of a person, one still living, you know. If you close your eyes and focus, you can see them up close, watch what they're doing, listen as they laugh. Like you're always with them. As close as the stars."

Death listened to his stories, and Death smiled. Because that's not what heaven was like at all, and even Jack knew it. Jack knew there wasn't even any heaven. There wasn't any God. No deity could be this cruel.

"That's – real nice. I – I . . ."

Her eyelids fluttered closed and she drifted off to sleep again.

Jack stood and left the room, unable to handle the pressing silence for a second longer. Death smirked at his back as he slipped from the room and closed the door, taking care to do it softly, so it wouldn't hurt Lola's ears as she slept. He even had to lower his voice while he was at her bedside, muffle it to a quiet husk that barely carried two feet.

That girl sat on her knees at the coffee table, papers spread out in front of her.

"I've ordered a headstone," she murmured. She looked up at him with tired eyes. "What do you want it to . . . to say?"

He thought of his sister's body lying under six feet of solid ground, decaying, and the thought repulsed him. How much easier it would be if somebody were obliterated completely when they died; that they just . . . ceased to be. No body. Nothing to picture decomposing underneath earth and oak as bugs ate at flesh you'd once held against you. When she was three he used to carry her everywhere, even though he could barely lift her up. She'd had hair, then: Thick, curling masses of golden-brown hair. He'd combed his fingers through it and did her up in crazy hairstyles. She'd asked him if he shaved it all off, if it might grow back as snakes, like Medusa. She'd always had a lively imagination. He supposed that would decay as well, disappear completely, like the rest of her.

"Put . . . . 'Lola Napier, finally sleeping on a walrus.'"

"Jesus . . ." That girl pushed her wild hair back from her strained face and shook her head. "I need your help here, Jack. I can't do this all alone. How can you make a joke out of this right now?"

"I can't be serious when you're asking me what I want to say about my dead sister when she's still alive."

"I know that it's been a long time coming, and you hoped that it would never come. I did too, believe me. But now it's here and we need to deal with it. She won't live for much longer . . ."

"Listen, just put down . . . 'Beloved sister and friend', and be done with it. It's not rocket science." He grabbed his jacket, with his gun tucked tightly in the pocket, and slipped it onto his shoulders. "I have to go out and get that money. I'll be right back."

She looked up at him, her eyes wide and weary. She looked five years older than she was, her face lined with grief. The future was so hazy and uncertain, and he hated it. Lola was really dying. She wouldn't last much longer. A few more days and then the comfortable, though not always convenient, threesome he'd known his entire life would be hacked bluntly down to two. And then what? He had never really stopped to ponder on what would happen when it was just he and that girl together, alone. Would he get a job and work for the rest of his life, like the common masses? save up enough money to get a nice, two-story house with a green, green lawn and raise a couple of kids? Kids . . . _kids_?

It seemed impossible, all of it. The future was shaky and unclear, and it made him feel sick when he thought of it.

"Don't be too late, all right?" That girl stood, stretching out her cramped limbs before standing up on her toes to press her lips to his. She lingered there a moment longer than she usually would, their faces brushing, before she finally backed away and picked up a coffin brochure.

Jack took this as his cue to leave.

* * *

The Riley warehouse felt hollow without its youngest owner. It felt as if the building was weeping, mourning for the loss of the people who had cared for it, who had claimed it for their own. Sean Riley's body had been found, shot five times, floating in the river. The Riley family was outraged, grieving, and murderously angry. They, at least, knew who was responsible for the death of their loved one. Johnny hadn't meant for anyone to live to tell the tale about who had really murdered Sean Riley, his daughter, or his daughter's lover. But Peyton Riley had.

"She's real messed up," Willie told him morosely, his eyes watering. He'd been half-blubbering since the moment Jack had walked into the door. "Such uh pretty face, all beat up like dat. She wuz duh prettiest little gal, you don't even know. I done held her when she was on'y six yeahs old. 'N now . . . dat right eye's nevuh gwoina be duh same agin. Doc says he might halftuh take it . . . . take it out."

He swiped at the tracks of tears streaming down his cheeks and lugged a duffel bag onto the table in front of him. Without speaking, his own grief outweighing anything he felt for Peyton Riley's dilemma – at least she was alive, wasn't she? If he was given the chance to save his sister in exchange for one of _his_ eyes . . . – he reached down and unzipped the bag. It smelled like cash. Like opportunity. The thought crossed his mind that maybe they put something in money to make it smell so tantalizing; to make it bring to mind infinite promise, power, and luxury. Was it just the knowledge of what you could do with it, or was there some nuance in the smell itself, there from the beginning of its production, that made a man become so infatuated with it? Some chemical that produced feel-good hormones in the brain, perhaps . . . He wouldn't put it past the government to coat their cash in that. To ensure that even once the pockets were empty, they'd always come back for more.

"It's all here?"

"You kin trust me, Mistuh Jay. I ain't always liked you much, but you nevuh did nothin' tuh hurt Missus Riley 'n . . . Mistuh Riley woulda 'preciated dat." From the front pocket of his uncommonly wrinkled, striped grey suit Willie pulled out a plaid handkerchief and blew his nose noisily. Jack hadn't even realized that people still carried handkerchiefs. It was classy, in a way. But then, wearing a suit in general would seem that way to him. He'd never really worn one before. Maybe he'd like it, if he ever got the chance.

Jack zipped the bag back up and then slung the duffel bag over his shoulder. The weight of it against his back felt . . . hopeful, almost. He could picture more of his future with the money in his hands, a clearer outline of where things were headed. But the past still lagged on him heavily, and he wondered if this – everything he'd done, Angelo dead, Riley lying in a puddle of glass and blood – was worth it. Lola was still dying. Jack had tried to cheat Death; tried to hide an ace up his sleeve to pull out at the last second, winning the game. But he'd forgotten that Death was omnipotent, and could not be played. His only plan was the absence of a plan, the tearing down of other plans just to make a point about the helplessness of man. And that was why He was unstoppable.

"Where you gwoina go, Mistuh Jay?" Willie asked him thickly, dabbing at his red-streaked eyes.

Jack shrugged. "I don't know. Nowhere, for at least a couple more days."

"Ah, Mistuh Jay, dat's not a good idea. You need tuh get outta dis place. Dem Sabatinos are lookin' fo' you. Dey think dat you done killed Mistuh Angelo."

"I did kill Mister Angelo," Jack replied, glancing up at Willie's stricken expression. "I got a bullet in my arm for stalling . . ."

"Mistuh Jay!"

"And if I hadn't, I'd have gotten another to the head." Jack paused, ignoring Willie's horrified trembling. For such a large man, he really did fall apart at the smallest things. "Don't you think it'd be so much . . . _easier_ . . . if you had absolutely nothing to lose, Willie?"

"I . . . I dun't think life would be much worth livin', if you ain't got nothin' tuh lose."

"Hmm . . ." Jack pushed a lock of tangled hair from his eyes and shrugged. "Maybe you're right."

He turned and started out of the warehouse, without a backward glance at the dusty shelves of liquor or the unused billiard tables. It had been one temporary stop on the way to wherever the hell he was going, and in the long run leaving it behind meant very little, especially when it held only memories of failure.

"Maybe I'll see you around, Willie," Jack called back, but Willie did not answer. He knew he'd probably never see the towering black man again. This, also, bothered him very little.

The streets of the Narrows were quiet, dusk pressing in on them with almost a lazy weight. Jack strolled casually through back alleys that he'd become accustomed to in the past year. He closed his eyes and walked a block or so blindly, trusting only his own muscle memory to guide him through the familiar streets, skirt around dumpsters and overflowing trash cans, and dip low under clothes lines laden with tattered garments. It was simple, that careless drifting, and without the sight of filth and desperation pressing in on him from all sides and clogging up his mind, much like the smoke billowing out from the sewers did his airways, Jack was able to reflect on everything he'd done, and everything he might do.

It was possible, maybe, that if he skipped town after Lola's death, changed his name, he might be able to take the money he had slung over his shoulder and put it to finding a place for that girl and him. Maybe even get her some tuition to go to college or something. Going back to school himself was obviously out of the question. He had no desire to do so, though it would still be possible, technically, for him to enroll in high school and get a GED of some sort.

With Lola gone, there would be no real need to pay off those medical bills. It was true that the hospital had overlooked the fact that Lola was, in all the ways that counted, an orphan, and that they had, rather graciously, allowed Jack to sign his name as her guardian, so long as he was held to paying back the bills himself. At the time, it seemed like a fair trade, because, in his own stupidity, he'd had some sort of far-fetched idea that Lola would recover. That some miracle would float down from the sky and be her saving grace. Like an angel or something, who would kiss her forehead and cure her.

He was such a fool.

It was amazing, really, how the promises of a couple powerful people had so effectively brainwashed him into believing in . . . . something. Happiness or life, or comfort. He didn't know. He only knew that before the mob, before Peyton Riley locked eyes with him and whispered things in that hushed, fervent tone of hers, he'd been level-headed. He'd known exactly how life worked, and he had no delusions about it. It was cruel and it was cold and there were no happy endings. And then . . . then he'd gotten a taste of money, a taste of power, a taste of freedom and friendship and possibility, and all of that seemed to change. It seemed like _he_ could change it. As if he had any sway over fate. As if he could disrupt the natural order of life. He'd been living in a dream world, drifting through life with his eyes closed and a hope that he might not trip and fall flat on his face.

Much like he was doing now.

When he stopped and opened in his eyes and saw Johnny Sabatino standing in front of him, he wasn't even surprised. It seemed fitting, after all. Johnny Sabatino had torn him from his dream world by giving one simple order to shoot: by a bullet fired from his own gun into the head of his partner. It seemed so right that his casual strolling would also end that way. A full circle.

"Hi, Johnny. Fancy meeting _you_ here."

Johnny did not smile, and in the dark Jack couldn't tell exactly what his countenance conveyed. Fear, anger, the lust for blood, haughtiness . . . they were all a possibility. In a way, he didn't even care.

"It's not so crazy, considerin' I been followin' you."

"Mm. I figured that."

The Italian man stepped forward slowly and deliberately, each footfall crunching gravel and filth beneath of his sole. He was wearing boots, but expensive ones, not the silver-toed work boots Jack would have chosen for the occasion. His customary necklace shimmered at his collar

Jack wondered if the occupants of that apartment expected something so barbaric to happen right beneath their noses. They wouldn't help, of course. They wouldn't even call the cops. Screams of pain and gunshots were far too common when you lived in the Narrows. Jack had heard them himself, a thousand times over, even before he joined the mob and partook in it.

"I thought you said you'd let me run, John," Jack said, shifting the weight of the duffel bag. He wished he could switch shoulders, but that would put pressure on the arm he'd been shot in, and that would hurt like hell. "It's not . . . Well, it's just not _nice_ to break your word. It'll get you a reputation for being untrustworthy."

"I planned on it. But . . .because of you, Peyton is alive. She ain't in no form to talk, of course, but once she is . . . . Well, I can't have you two chattin' it up again, can I? Knowin' how loose those lips of yours are, I'm willin' to bet you'd scurry right back to her and her family and run your mouth." A shadow fell across the top half of his face, until Jack could see only his thin lips, stretching into a smile. "Can't have that."

He didn't try to correct Johnny. It wasn't his doing that Peyton lived, at all. It was Willie's. Nevertheless, the tiny details were trivial now, he supposed, what with the crunching of gravel behind him, and four dark, bulging forms emerging from the dark ends of the alley and blocking any chance he'd had of running, even if he'd attempted to make his escape. On his back, the duffel bag grew heavy, a priceless weight that he'd tried to so hard to deliver safely.

How much had he given to get the money he carried around, slung over his shoulder? Everything he'd given up, sacrificed, all the things he'd degraded himself to do and to say and to serve, and it was all worthless, all of it. He still didn't want to drop it, didn't want to toss it aside, and yet he had no choice. There were men pressing in on him and he needed his hands, needed his gun, and so he threw the cause of his degeneracy aside, into the shadowy corner of the alleyway, and reflected very briefly on the cost of cost itself.

Horrible things, horrible thoughts . . . . He didn't even know who he was anymore, and Lola was dying, and that girl . . . She said death would be like a soft kiss goodnight, the flutter of a moth's wings, the whisper of a wind that carried a silk scarf away on the breeze. He said it would all end with a rush of air so sharp you couldn't tell if it was hot or cold, a curse, and some ironical laughter.

Maybe he was wrong, because he didn't feel like laughing now.

The shadows came at him like demons pulling him down to Hell. He'd sold his soul, hadn't he expected this? You only got so long before you had to make the payment. Jack wanted to make the point that it was an unfair trade, because he'd auctioned off his conscience for some change, for his sister's health, and he'd been scammed. But it was too late, and as he reached inside of his jacket for his gun one of the shadows caught him across the side of his head with a thickly-coiled bicycle chain.

He stumbled, the gun went sliding out of sight, and it was all another shadow needed to sink a fist of steel into his gut – no, not steel, brass knuckles that adorned the fingers. They glinted in the dull light and suddenly the shadow took form, turning into Jackson, the leering, loathsome thug who was grinning malevolently down at him with savage delight as he delivered another vicious right-hook to the side of Jack's head.

He'd taken more than this. They didn't know that, of course. Couldn't know that when he was only six years old his father had kicked him until he'd broken four ribs and fractured his wrist. They had caught him unaware, fuzzy, lost somewhere in the jumbled mess of his mind, and in that confusion Jack had forgotten something. . . . He knew how to _do_ this. No guns, no safe word, no weak excuses: Just him, just his own pumping blood and his fists and the violent energy that made him something more than a lanky seventeen year old.

Jackson got an elbow to the face and then a sharp blow to the neck which sent him sprawling, and Jack leapt over the body and gathered up a discarded trash can lid before the others could swing their respective weapons. The next thug who came at him, one who was unidentifiable and probably a pay-for-hire killer who needed money for dope and didn't care how he got it, got a circle of steel in the face for his foolish troubles.

The man with the bicycle chain looked like he was foaming at the mouth, a demonic glint in his eyes that told Jack that this was something a bit more than just a hired job. This was fun and games for Chains, and when he killed he would enjoy it. Jack couldn't exactly say he identified with that as of yet, but then, there was always time, and he wasn't one to judge.

"What's wrong, John? Can't come up on me in a dark alley without ten of your boys? Angelo would be ashamed!"

"_Don't_ call me John!" The voice came from somewhere in the dark, Jack couldn't decide which direction exactly, because the haggard panting of the men at a standoff with him paired with the pitiful moaning and snuffling of the thug who he'd hit with the trash can lid distorted the sound waves.

"That was his name for you, right? Your own _cousin_, who you forced me to kill . . ."

The man with the chains gritted his teeth and rushed at Jack with a snarl. But being lithe and long had its advantages, and with an agility he'd rarely displayed, Jack managed to duck and roll out of harm's way just as the chain went whipping through the air, chipping off brick from the side of the building it connected with.

Jack didn't pause, but rushed forward and took Chains down by hurtling himself right at his kneecaps. The man crumpled, and after a struggle punctuated by punches thrown at another thug who came to Chains' assistance, Jack managed to successfully snuff out the man's consciousness by sinking the knife he'd extracted from his sock deep into the man's throat. Jack didn't know if he was still alive. He only knew he'd stabbed him effectively enough to make his eyes close and his deadly limbs go limp, which was all that mattered. The pulse that had beat hot and fierce beneath of Jack's palm was faint by the time he released, the man's last breaths gurgling out as blood spilled hot over his hands; if he'd had more time to think about things, Jack might have had to admit that the experience had thrilled him.

But he didn't have time, and –

Sharp, nauseating, blinding pain. He could taste gravel, trash, dirt on his lips, smell the putrid slime of garbage, urine, and feces that had been smeared across this alley for countless years, with his face pressed against the ground. The back of his head was on fire, and –

His spine was erupting, imploding inwards, nerves bursting and spreading poison through his blood and then –

His arm, the arm he'd been shot in, was bleeding fresh blood. What was happening? Something was pummeling him, and –

He rolled over and metal connected with asphalt. A spark went up, fire bright, like the flashes of light going off in front of Jack's vision. A man was standing over him, someone tall and thin and . . . .Angelo . . .

"You didn't have to kill him, Jay. See, that's the thing you don't seem to get. The only thing _I _did was give you a choice. You chose. You chose to save your own skin and let Angelo rot six feet under. There's always a choice. And there's always a consequence."

Jack blinked up at Johnny as he raised his arm again, a long, thin something stretching up into the air ready to swing, and as it caught the moonlight he realized with a solemn acceptance that Oh, it's a crowbar: The source of the agony.

Before Jack could take control of his body to adequately command it to move, roll away, fight back, swing up a leg and catch his adversary right in between the knees – before he could do any of this the rod of metal was colliding with his stomach, and he felt his ribs crack.

_His body felt smaller, lighter, and his heartbeat was so strangely fast, like the wings of a hummingbird, beating against his rib cage in a sharp staccato, a March Grandioso. The form towering above him had broad shoulders – _

Johnny flexed his narrow shoulders and swung back –

– _and swung back the bat he held in his hands. His ribs ached. The only thing he could think about was, for some reason, a small, brightly colored blob of a toy that seemed so important to him. Hadn't he left it somewhere? He'd hid it, that was it, and he'd never gone back outside to get it, and he hated the thought that some other little kid might come find it and take it from him, but he guessed it didn't matter because his father, his father was swinging – _

This time he had enough sense to move, to use all of his strength to throw his body out of the way, just as the crowbar went slashing down, skimming the right side of his head, and his skull rang like the bells of Notre Dame, and –

– _and he was twelve years old, and he'd just caught a blow to the face by that two-by-four. Somewhere near to him, he could hear Lola's blood-curdling screams, like she was witnessing a dismemberment, but her shrieks of protest and unadulterated terror didn't stop their dad. He only lifted his arm and – _

"See what happens when you plot and plan, Jay?"

"_. . . . Plotting and planning . . . I kn . . . know you are."_

"_We're not . . . we're not . . ."_

"What happens when you double-cross? When you just can't . . . keep . . . your mouth . . . . _closed_?"

Johnny reached out spidery fingers to grip the front of his shirt and pull his face up close, hot, foreign breath fanning across his face. Jack's eyes were swimming, hazy, a film of wetness obscuring his vision on the right side. Blood, blood from where the crowbar had scraped against his skin, was dripping down his face.

"_You're always bloody, too. That's why it reminds me of you."_

"It's a shame. I hate to make that pretty little girl of yours shed any tears."

His breath caught, wet and wild, building up in his chest. How did he know, how did he _know_? He'd tried so hard to keep her hidden, to keep her safe . . . .

Johnny chuckled at Jack's expression. "Oh, what? You think I wouldn't know about her? That I didn't know, all along, _everything_ about you?"

Jack was writhing with anger, pain, denial. Another mistake, another misstep.

"But don't worry, I'll make sure to take care of her for you, huh Jay? The way you took care of my girl."

"_Where would I be without you, Jack?"_

In flashes that were like a rapid firing of pictures and senses back-to-back, Jack smelled violet perfume and felt soft skin beneath of his rough palms. He heard the quiet outward sigh of contentment that she uttered in her sleep when she laid down beside him at night. He felt the curls slip through his fingers as he kissed her neck. He saw her wounded face as he disappointed her, yet again. He kissed away the salty tracks of tears from her cheeks; pushed her up against a wall and tugged at her clothes; he saw her sitting, innocent and untouched and perfect, like a statue, on that too-sunny day the very first time he'd ever met her.

Jack swung out violently, a brutal punch to Johnny's mouth that sent him sprawling backwards and spluttering, spitting blood out in thick strands. Enough to loosen or dislodge a tooth or two, Jack was sure, but he couldn't stop there. His own safety, his own life ending with a rush of hot or cold air and maybe some swearing, was one thing, but her . . . . Not her.

He rushed at Johnny, grabbed up the crowbar and sent it crashing into his raised arm, which the Italian threw out to deflect the blow. Johnny howled and Jack heard a snap like a gunshot – broken, without a doubt. It was obvious whose batting arm was better. Maybe if it had been another time, another place, another circumstance, Jack could have been a famous baseball player. And he'd make his way up to the major leagues, pointing to the outfield like Babe Ruth before he sent it out of the park, and the crowds would roar. He swung again at Johnny, in quick succession that lasted seconds but seemed like slow motion as his fantasy alternative life played out in his mind. And he would have an endless supply of wealth and women. But one day, one day he would be waylaid by a beautiful reporter, in that too-white, too-starched blouse, with her wild hair up and back and prim glasses perched on her nose, and then, man, he'd just be _gone_.

He forgot about the others. Those few that were still conscious had managed to get back up. Two were still down for the count, perhaps forever, and one had been standing in the background this whole time, a smallish, young kid, who looked scared out of his wits but had enough brains and guts to know that he had to get Jack away from Johnny. So he and Jackson grabbed Jack and hauled him away, pinned him to the ground as Johnny snuffled and spat out blood, scrambling to stand.

"Your little bitch'll pay for what you just did, Jay!" Johnny roared thickly, his words wet and slurred, bubbles of blood pooling up at the corners of his scarlet-streaked mouth. "I bet she doesn't know what kinda man you are, huh? A sweet little thing like her. She oughta know. When she finds your body, she oughta know what she's looking at. A traitor. A snitch. A backstabbing sonuvabitch. That's right. I'll make sure she can't make _no_ mistake_. _You'll wear your true face on the outside when they put you into the ground."

He reached into his boot and pulled out something. It snapped, extending, and that, too, glinted in the moonlight: A blade made from sharp, deadly steel.

Jack's breath was coming quick as Johnny gripped a fistful of his hair and pressed the blade to his mouth, the two other thugs holding him still and submissive. One sharp edge pierced the bottom lip, leaving a trail of blood and a sharp, stinging pain. Shallow cuts always hurt the worst.

Johnny tightened his fist, pulled the short hairs at the back of Jack's head and made him gasp out, his lips parting, and that was when he shoved the blade inside.

Shallow cuts, shallow cuts, all across his tongue. Every microscopic movement the blade made inside of his mouth cut part of the dark, fleshy cavern, and Jack gave up thrashing the minute the knife's serrated blade cut into his palate. Johnny smirked through the darkness and twisted the blade around, and Jack felt nothing more than ripping of tightly knit muscles that were never meant to be plied apart like this. Then everything went red.

_Jack was bleeding so heavily he was sure he would die. He'd never bled so hard in his life. It was like it was everywhere, the blood. It was running from his nose, from his mouth, from his forehead. It was in his nostrils and his eyes and he was choking on it. He could feel it all over his arms and his neck and his chest. _

It was in his eyes, in his throat, running up into his nose. He was suffocating on the very thing that gave him life, and still it went on and on and on and on, ripping, tearing, screaming – screaming? God, more ripping, every scream. His eyes burst with fire, darkness, stars in inky black night sky. When he blinked once he saw his father leaning over him, snarling drunkenly; when he blinked twice he saw Johnny Sabatino, his olive face twisted into a savage expression of exultant triumph; three times and he saw Death, a clown, dark pits for eyes and a bloody smile, and He was laughing.

He'd always known that was how it would end.


	20. Chapter 20

**A/N: **Okay guys, this oneis **LONG**. Seriously. It's actually obnoxious, it's that long. But honestly, I didn't want to split it up into two chapters. The flow of it would get all messed up, and I know you've been waiting for the end to Part I for FOREVER — well, twenty chapters anyway. But hey. I hope you guys can make it through. It's kind of riddled with action so it shouldn't be TOO boring. Part II might take more than two weeks to post – it's hard to switch from Jack's POV to a DRASTICALLY different one. I have to get into the zone, you know?

It'll be a whole lot easier if the feedback on this chapter was as amazing as the feedback for last chapter! You guys really blew me away. = D

By the by, the tense change that takes place in this chapter **is intentional**_**. **_

Oh, and here's Willie as I see him:

http : / / www . thesharkguys . com / wp-content / uploads / 2009 / 06 / dunkenkingpin . png

Remove all spaces.

The reference to a pet gorilla is from either Calvin & Hobbes the comics or a fanfiction I read somewhere . . . Dunno. But anyway, holla at whoever first came up with having a pet gorilla in "House".

Now, the moment you've all been waiting for. . . . .

* * *

This pain was intolerable.

He hadn't thought that death would feel like this. The absence of all feeling, all consciousness, all existence, yes. Lingering, crippling pain that made tears leak from his eyes – he could _feel_ the wetness sliding down his temples and into oblivion – no. No, he hadn't expected death to be like this. He hadn't expected to feel the pain.

Was it death? He remembered so much. The thugs in the alleyway, and . . . pain. There it was, and it flared up, in his ribs and in his head but most violently in his face, around his mouth. He wanted to raise his hand to touch his lips, feel what had happened. Had he lost all his teeth? He tried to run his tongue along them to check but that, too, felt heavy and damaged beyond use. This pain, this pain was intolerable.

After the pain, what was there? He had to think, to remember, but there was so much he couldn't . . . . Blackness, spotty white dancing across his line of vision before unconsciousness, and . . . .

"_Dun't worry, Mistuh Jay. Dun'chu worry, now. I got'chu. I got'chu."_

Blackness. A large, hulking shape that bled from the side of a building as his vision flushed with ebony, spotty grey creeping inward until he was experiencing tunnel vision, and he was sure, in that abstract way, that he was dying.

He was . . . . Who was he? He couldn't think. He couldn't remember his name or . . . He searched desperately for his memories before the pain, before the alleyway. There were flashes again. Bright, honey sunlight, and the scent of violets on the air. Soft white skin and a lilting laugh that didn't belong to the same exquisite creature. They were separate. The murky form of one in his mind bled into two, separated and gained hazy definition. Two girls. Two laughs. One higher and chirrupy, one lower and more . . . more . . . .

"You awlright, Mistuh Jay? You think you kin open yo' eyes? Mistuh Jay?"

Open the eyes. Open the eyelids. A movement that was so easy, before, wasn't it? He couldn't remember quite how to do it, now. There was something to do with . . . eyelashes, didn't they play some part? Or . . . . no, that's not right. It's just a command. From the brain, to the muscle, causing contraction. Yes, anatomy. Yes, he remembered some of that.

And he remembered stinging, tugging, his cheeks . . . His cheeks . . .

He blinked his eyes open and then shut immediately as his corneas burned. Squinting hurt. Everything hurt.

"Yo' huwt real bad, Mistuh Jay," came the deep, quavering voice of . . . . a black man. Yes, a black man. And at his side, in his mind, there was a blonde woman. Their names, their names. . . . "I bin takin' care uh you fo' a long time. I . . . . Yo' huwt real bad."

He tried to open his lips and speak, the next step, the next bodily function he was sure to remember, but he found that he couldn't. His lips were tight, tighter than he remembered, and even the slightest tremble of them sent the sort of staggering pain through his mind that made his entire vision blot out.

"Dun't try'n tawlk, Mistuh Jay. Yo' . . . Yo' mouth is . . ."

Slicing, tearing, blood in his mouth and –

"Mistuh Jay? You need watuh? I gots a straw I been feeding you wit'. Mos'ly chicken broth 'n watuh."

He closed his eyes tight, blocking out the memory he'd unearthed, and then opened them again, and this time they focused. He stared up at a ceiling that seemed familiar to him, and at the sideline of his vision he saw a wide, flat face, with ebony skin. He knew that face. . . . Willie.

Willie, and a mask of apprehension. He tried to speak again, ask his name. Jay? No . . . Not quite right. Not quite. . . . Another memory as he searched for the right word, and slashing – slashing – slashing –

He shut his eyes again, felt panicked, wanted to escape, to get away, to retreat back to that lower laugh, the girl who smelled like violets and had such soft skin and who touched him, sometimes, whoever he was. She would know him, know his face, touch it gently and whisper promising things to him. He remembered that. Calmness, serenity, a place where the fear didn't rise up and take him by the throat.

His throat was dry. Horrendously dry. And his mouth had a metallic, stale, putrid taste to it. Like it hadn't been brushed in months. He wanted to take a gallon of water and rinse out his throat, drink deeply from it, slosh it around inside of his cheeks . . . . his cheeks.

He raised up one hand to bring it to his face, but before he could touch his hand was caught by another, a larger one, the skin colors contrasting sharply as he looked up.

"Mistuh Jay, you kin't be touchin' yo' face." He, whoever he was, tried to respond. "No, dun't tawlk. Wait, lemme get'chu a pin."

The black man shuffled away, and in this interval he once again tried to figure out his name. Jay, Jay . . . Initial Jay . . . . thirty-five even, wrapped and bagged_. _What did that mean? It meant something, he was sure . . . Something, somewhere, at some point. A blonde woman with curly hair and a bruised face and . . .

Willie shuffled back into view, and with careful, capable arms he pulled Jay, as he supposed he was known as to this man, at least, up into a sitting position. He was wearing ragged pajama pants that were not his own, with nothing, he felt, underneath, and also an extra large tee shirt that he was sure belonged to the black man himself. It hung off one of his shoulders like the womens' shirts from the eighties, back when that had been fashionable. Willie placed a pad of paper onto Jay's lap and then handed him a pen.

"You remembuh yo' lettuhs?" Willie asked, and in his mind Jay repeated, ABCDEFGHIJK-eleminohpee. He nodded jerkily and picked up the pen. It took so much coordination. Had he been hit in the head? Had he lost some of his basic motor functions? Why did he feel so . . . so _stale_? Unused. Like he'd been in a coma for years.

The pen folded into his hand in a familiar position, for which Jay was glad – at least he still had muscle memory. But his fingers shook as he wrote, and his arms felt like rubber – weak and pliable, like someone had sucked all the minerals from his bones and they were now as bendable as a spaghetti noodle.

After a minute of dedicated scrawl, Jay showed Willie his note.

_My name?_

Willie shrugged. "I ain't nevuh known dat. You's just Mistuh Jay tuh me. It's yo' first initial."

A letdown.

_What happened?_

"You ain't remembuh? Aw . . . It wuz Johnny Sabatino. He 'n a few boys snuck on up on you 'n . . . roughed you up real bad. Same as dey did my Missus."

Jay digested this information, and from the back of his mind there whispered something like prices, or the weight of . . . . drugs. Yes, drugs. He'd been involved in the mob, he remembered, and . . . Working, for Willie and the Missus . . . . Riley, Peyton Riley, Johnny Sabatino's wife. It was coming back to him, creeping up slowly, unfolding like the pages of a book he'd heard as a child but hadn't for years, and which still felt a mite foreign to him as it was reread aloud. He remembered the blonde's voice, her flirtation, that feeling he'd gotten as he toyed with her in the backseat of a sleek black car. He'd been trying to take Johnny Sabatino down and to do that he had used . . . . Angelo. Angelo. He'd killed him, he remembered.

It was such a strange, detached feeling. Like his entire life beforehand, the blurry parts he could remember, were some dream sequence that he was trying to piece together so as to record into his journal. Like he'd only just woken from a long, long sleep, into reality.

_I needed money for something._

"Fo' yo' li'l sis. She's sick."

Lola. Lola, Lola, Lo, _Never Trust A Scoundrel_. He remembered. How could he forget? A smiling, bubbling child with soft, rounded limbs and curling hair, and the sickly, emaciated teenager who was stuck somewhere between looking nine and ninety. Her bald head. Screaming, blood, a two-by-four, and honey-and-banana sandwiches in a house with floral wallpaper.

His breath came sharp again, his chest contracting until he felt lightheaded, and he swayed where he sat. Willie reached out to steady him.

_My sister. I need you to find my sister and take me home to her. _

Willie looked up apprehensively and then said, "Awlright. I'll go 'n see if I kin do dat. Dem Sabatinos wouldn't be happy if you popped up alive agin. I been keepin' you hid."

He cared nothing for staying hidden. His sister was at the forefront of his mind, the short amount of time she hadn't been, quite forgotten by now. When he'd left her she'd asked about heaven, hadn't she? And he'd told her different stories. She'd been slipping away then. How long had he been here? Three, four, five days? Would she still be alive when he returned home?

_How long has it been?_

Again Willie looked wary, and when he replied he spoke slowly, his arm reaching forward to grip Jay's shoulder in ready expectation for a bad reaction.

"You been in real bad shape, Mistuh Jay. I been givin' you pills fo' duh pain, so you kin stay still 'n heal. Jus' took one, in fact. 'N den yo' wounds got infected a li'l. You been here for jus' about three weeks. Awlmost four."

Four. Four weeks. What month did that make this? Was it summer? There was something in his mind about summer, something he had to do, somewhere he was supposed to go or someplace he was supposed to attend . . . . A low murmur of laughter, that violet scent, and he knew it had something to do with that elusive _her_ that kept flittering just out of reach of his conscious recognition. In a way he had a feeling that he'd disappointed her, and that it wasn't a new occurrence.

_They don't know where I am?_

The "They" he spoke of was loosely given – Jay assumed that it consisted of his sister and the girl he kept trying so desperately to latch onto. Her name, however, seemed to be as gone as his own. At least for the time being.

Willie shook his head solemnly. Jay pondered on this.

_The money. You should take it to my sister and tell them I'll be home soon. That I'm safe. She's probably worried sick._

"She" – the violet scented girl, not his sister.

Willie nodded again.

"I got 'bout twenny-thousand. Johnny 'n his boys took duh rest. It's all stained wit blood but . . ."

Jay shrugged, and the action sent shockwaves of pain through his abdomen.

"Yo' ribs are still sore, Mistuh Jay. Be careful."

With a wavering hand Jay tore off the top piece of paper from the pad and balled it up, tossing it away. He started fresh on the new piece, his handwriting infinitesimally clearer, or as clear as it would get, as he wrote out his next question.

_What's wrong with my face?_

Willie read the words and then read them again, the dark irises of his eyes moving rapidly back and forth across the line, one, two, three times, before he bit his purple lip.

"Johnny done . . . cut'chu up, Mistuh Jay. Sliced yo' face . . ." Slicing, cutting, slashing, and there was that pain again, that flashing of picture and senses that overloaded his mind and sent his heart racing with terror, until he felt like he was choking, choking on it. "Yo' gwoina look a li'l dif'rent from now on . . ."

_Different?_ - Shaky, almost illegible.

"It's . . . ." Willie bit his lip again. "I tried tuh stitch you up, but . . . My mama taught me how tuh a long time ago 'n I did my best. I couldn't take you to duh hospital 'cuz Johnny woulda had someone up tuh finish you off 'n I couldn't tell no one, like duh Doc, 'cuz dey all half blame you fo' Missus Riley loosin' dat eye. . . ."

Willie trailed off helplessly, looking down into Jay's eyes, almost as if for confirmation that he'd done the right thing.

_Let me see._

Willie shook his head and crossed his arms like a frightened child is apt to do, as if hugging himself.

_Let me see, Willie. _

But Willie shook his head and tightened his thick arms around his body.

"You see 'em 'ventually, Mistuh Jay. Don't be in no hurry. Jus' . . . jus' let dat pill go tuh work."

And it was. Jay could feel it in his veins, like the blood was coagulating and getting caught. Sluggish, like his mind, and even the memories he'd managed to forage through the wreckage for were slipping away from him, sand in his fist, slipping through the fingers as he groped to hold on to them.

"I'll go find yo' sis. Take dat money to her. Den I'll let'chu see. Jus' sleep, now. It'll be awlright."

His eyelids felt heavy, leaden, drooping closed. He swayed and lost balance. With the consciousness that he still held onto he felt hot hands against his sides, sparking pinpricks of pain, guiding him backwards onto a surface of some sort. Soft, lumpy. He was sleeping on a cloud, that was what it was. Floating, in the sky, and somewhere next to him there was a porcelain skinned girl with the bluest eyes he'd ever seen in his entire life.

And then he was gone.

* * *

He was awoken by the snuffling sounds of sobbing.

It was easier to remember things, this time. The grogginess faded away faster, or maybe he was just used to the feeling by now, he wasn't sure. What he did know was that he was able to recite his garbled history somewhat adequately – Peyton Riley with only one eye, his sick sister Lola, Johnny Sabatino who had sliced him up, Angelo Sabatino whom Jay had killed, and Willie who was crying.

He'd tried to open his mouth before he realized that this was wrong, that he shouldn't do it, and at the first tug on the sides of his lip, uncomfortably tight, his eyes rolled back with pain.

"Mi-Mistuh Jay," Willie gulped. "Dun't try 'n tawlk."

Obviously. He reached up and touched his parched lips, horrendously cracked, and then slid his fingers up along the side of his mouth . . . .

Willie swatted his hand away just as he felt an uneven roughness that he couldn't recognize as the planes of his face. Then again, he was still unsure as to what his name was, so perhaps that was how his face had always felt.

Jay, Jay, Jay. J. John, Jacob, Jingle-Heimer Schmidt, His Name Is My Name, Too. It seemed comical that he should remember that little diddy and not his birth name.

A pad of paper was shoved into Jay's hands, along with the same pen as the last time he'd been conscious. With a throaty sigh, he wrote out his inquiries.

_Did you tell them I'm okay? Did they get the money? How is Lola?_

Willie twisted his hands in front of him so violently that his large knuckles cracked and popped. Jay waited for his response, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach which indicated that despite misplacing many other memories, and apparently the ability to open his lips, the part of his brain which gave birth to dread and managed to identify changes in atmosphere and make inferences as to such, was still very much in tact.

"I . . . I . . ." Willie swiped at his eyes and took a calming breath. "I went tuh yo' apartment 'n . . . . ain't nobody was dere."

Jay shrugged, pleased to note that his ribs hurt exponentially less than the last time he'd done so. Had it been days, then, since his last bout of lucidity?

_Where were they?_

Willie snuffled and then shuffled his feet. "I went askin' 'round for 'em. 'You seen a li'l sick gal?' I said. 'N . . . 'N dey tol' me dat . . . dat . . . Oh, Mistuh Jay, dey tol' me dat she gone and died a week aftuh Johnny got tuh you."

"_Oh come on, big brother . . . . Why so serious?"_

Jay blinked rapidly, the notepad balanced on his knee slipping to the cement floor as he pitched forward. He longed to open his mouth and gasp for air as the words resounded in his head, _died, Lola died, she's dead, dead, forever, no going back, it's over. _Willie let out another muffled sob that Jay barely heard with his head between his knees, breathing sharply through his nostrils. He had his fingers in his hair, the first time he'd touched it since he'd been awake. Greasy, wildly out of control. The desire to reach up and pull the strands out from their roots swept over him, and before he even had the chance to consider it he felt Willie plodding over and knocking his hands away, strands of dark, oily blond hair hanging limp between the fingers. He couldn't remember giving his body the command to do that.

He felt like screaming, tearing at Willie, destroying everything in sight. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. Lola, dead, and he hadn't even been there. He hadn't even touched her cheek before she breathed her last breath. She loved him, she had loved him, he'd been all she had, and he'd let her down in the last possible way he could ever let her down. Forever, no going back. It was all over.

To spite himself or to just prove he could, he didn't really know, he pried open his aching lips, ignoring the searing pain that traveled like corkscrew thumbtacks up through his nerve cells and set fire to his brain. There was something wrong with his face, he knew it, he hated it, and it was why he'd been in this damn warehouse unconscious as his little sister died, and he would show himself, show Johnny's workmanship, that he would not be controlled by this any longer.

Tongue working furiously, clumsily, sluggishly, he groped out the confines of his own mouth, noting that he'd lost one tooth, towards the way back, as if those even mattered, but that the rest seemed to be in tact. His tongue itself, however, was thick. Disgusting. Like some swollen eel that flopped uselessly. He couldn't seem to get it to work together with his cracked lips as he tried to form the one word that resonated in his mind, the only thing he could think of.

Willie cried as he struggled, muttering "I'm sorry, Mistuh Jay" over and over again. Jay ignored him, ignored everything except that one command: Speak. Talk. Say one word. Just one. Just that one word. You know how to do it, think, remember, you used to do it all the time, it's nothing new. But the muscles, the muscles that had pulled tight and folded over the familiar syllables, seemed to be unresponsive. Damaged. There was something really wrong with his face, wasn't there? Really, really wrong . . .

By tightening up his throat and minimizing the amount his lips moved, he managed, after several furious minutes of working his jaw and struggling over his own insipid impotence, to utter one word:

"Lo - la"

His voice was all wrong. That was obvious. A raspy yet high-pitched sound. Hadn't it been deeper, once, a long, long time ago? Before the pain and the darkness, it had been deeper. But the awkward positioning of his tongue and the uncomfortable yet effective tightening of his throat created a nasally sound, something grating. He was all wrong. Everything was so wrong.

"Where – other –"

Like a primitive caveman, Jay rasped out half-formed words, grunts, a savage. Willie listened to him, rocking slightly where he stood, tears streaking down his big face. The black man bit his wet, trembling bottom lip to stifle another sob.

The other girl, he longed to ask. Where is the other girl? Why haven't you mentioned her? Why haven't you brought her, to place her cool hand on his forehead and let him know that, even though he'd ruined everything, it would be all right? They were supposed to go somewhere together, he knew that. Somewhere . . . .

Willie might have been expecting this reaction, the followup question, because despite the incoherency of Jay's query the other man had apparently completely understood.

"She . . . . She . . ." Willie's whole body trembled, ready to implode into a mass of quivering jelly or maybe just faint, either was possible, and then he howled out the answer. "Johnny done got tuh her, too, Mistuh Jay! She's gone. Dey both in duh grave, God rest deir souls! I saw duh graves myself, unduhneath that li'l tree in duh graveyard!"

"_Your little bitch'll pay for what you just did, Jay!"_

His whole mouth was splitting open, and Willie had his arms around him, his hand over his lips and under his jaw, forcing the mouth closed even as Jay screamed against the skin, telling him to stop, stop it, or he'd rip his cheeks clean open again. There was wetness streaking down his neck, where the feeling returned. Blood, blood from his mouth where Johnny had cut him. Johnny . . . . Johnny, God he would kill him, he would kill him if it was the last thing he did. Everything was gone, everything, he'd taken everything that had ever meant something. All the violets and soft touches and promise, it was all gone. And he didn't even know her name, he couldn't even remember her _face_ . . . . He loved her, he had loved her, and now she was dead, too, like everything else he touched. He killed everything. Everything he touched withered and died.

Jay stumbled out of Willie's grasp as the black man sobbed unrestrainedly for everything he'd lost at the hands of Johnny, as well. Without thinking Jay started to scramble across the floor on all fours, towards dusty shelves of liquor that he remembered from so long ago, a ghost of a memory. His legs were like jelly when he attempted to stand, and he fell sideways, unable to support himself after weeks of lying on a lumpy couch with poor nourishment.

When he reached the cases he pulled them open and started clawing at the bottles, letting them fall to the floor and shatter, spilling deep red, honey, amber liquids. It all seeped into the knees of his frayed pajama pants and still Jay pushed vials and decanters aside, until he reached what he was looking for – the mirror at the back.

When he saw himself there was a breath, a pause, of silence, in which the absolute absurdity of the situation sunk in and something deep inside him snapped, forever, irreparable. It took only five seconds of stunned observation for Jack Napier to remember his name, and then discard it as quickly as he had regained it, because it took just another two seconds for him to realize that it wasn't who he was, not anymore.

Two grotesque scars dripping crimson curved up on the sides of his face, one a puckered arc and the other messily repaired and bluntly ended.

It was like fate, like cracks on a ceiling made of plaster that twisted and twisted, connecting at the ends in a seamless circle. In an instant he felt he could trace it all back to the very beginning, where it'd all started, unchangeable, unstoppable, preordained. One endless strand of twisting, of manipulation, of sadistic, gleeful divine intervention. There had been no stopping this. There had been no accidents, no coincidences. This had been written from the minute he'd been born, and everything that had happened since then all led up to this, this, like he'd been meant for it and everything else was just a necessary prologue, the preparation phase, getting him ready for his anointment, his rebirth.

He wasn't himself, anymore. He wasn't even human. He understood, now.

He was Death.

His laughter filled the warehouse, echoing back, insane. But he couldn't stop, couldn't control it. Because it was just so, so funny.

* * *

The first thing he notices is that the scars are gone.

His cheeks are smooth as he runs his fingertips along the planes of his face, and he thinks that it feels familiar, as if he's done it a thousand times or more in the past, but at the same time it is foreign. He realizes that he's awoken in his old apartment, bare walls and devoid of furniture, beds dressed with snowy white sheets. It is different, but the same. There is no sister, no Lola, but somewhere, faintly, the scent of violets hangs on the air.

He searches for pictures of her, first. Of course there is nothing. The ones that he finds are of him, and he looks happy, staring off into the distance at someone, her, he knows it to be true because when has he ever felt happy except when he is looking at her? Never. There is no happiness without her.

Abruptly, things change. The apartment, once sweetly tinged with her own brand of perfume, now smells foul and rancid. Stale. Unused. When he returns to the room he woke in, surrounded by those white sheets, it is stained with blood. The sheets are twisted and rusty brown, and the place reeks of death, of betrayal. His betrayal. _Where were you, Jack, where were you?_

The sight strikes him through with terror, an ice pick to his chest, and he is running. Pelting down stairs that collapse into dust behind him. When he reaches the street he does not glance behind to observe the wreckage he leaves in his wake, a smoldering pile of rubble where his home, not happy but sometimes peaceful when she was by his side, used to stand somewhat crookedly. The streets of the Narrows are empty and barren and cleaner than average, and this makes him uneasy, as if the entire balance of the universe is thrown off and nothing will be right again, nothing, nothing.

He reaches the graveyard in record time, gasping, hands on his knees. Peripherally he realizes that his clothes are different. A threadbare jacket that he has worn in the past, and shoes that pinch his toes and are spray-painted black. It's a drizzly afternoon and there is a sobbing woman somewhere in the distance, hidden in the soupy mist that enshrouds all the graves. His mother is somewhere and his father is beneath the ground out there, too, but they are not who he is looking for.

The mist has permeated into the ground; with each footstep he sinks deep into the moist earth, and every effort to lift his leg another step is difficult. The shoes are pinching his feet so tightly he is certain they must be shrinking and he is forced to stop halfway through navigating amongst the fog to pull them off. He continues barefoot, mud squelching between his toes, his labored breath the only warmth that hangs on the air. His clothes are damp and heavy with the wet air, pulling him down, and he realizes with each step he is sinking further and further into the earth. Quicksand.

But he isn't done yet. That tree standing up against the distant white horizon is his goal, and he won't stop until he gets there.

That doesn't mean it has to be easy. It isn't. Each tread weighs him down. As he skirts through the graves decaying hands claw up through the dirt to grab at his ankles; trip him until he's down on all fours like an animal, pulling himself along through the mud. His mother's wails grow softer and then louder and then turn into screeching, like demons from the gates of Hell.

And finally he is there. A thousand heartbeats that pound against his chest later, and there he is in front of that tree. Those two fresh graves, the low-hanging branches that are inexplicably covered in tattered garments, like the back alleys of the Narrows. It is not beautiful here. It is not peaceful.

He finds her grave and he digs. A blank tombstone stands watching, because even in this hellish nightmare world he can't remember her name.

He digs until his fingernails are bleeding, until the skin on his hands is gone completely and maggots stick to his flesh, chewing, chewing, chewing. It all seems so difficult, so ghastly, but he thinks this must be the price he pays for letting her die in the first place.

He hits oak and grapples for a moment against the polished coffin top. Without realizing it he has dug himself into a six-foot deep hole, the rectangle of sky very pale and thin above him. But this is trivial. The foremost thing is that the coffin is shaking, and he knows that inside she's alive, buried with breath still inside of her, and he's just in time. He wasn't too late after all.

With trembling limbs he flings open the lid and prepares to pull her into his arms, secure in the thought that when he does her name will finally come to him, and he will never stop saying it.

The coffin lid is off and before can reach in, she reaches out. Hands wrap around his neck and pull his face down against hers, lips against lips, just as it was before.

Except it isn't. She doesn't smell of violets or honey sunlight. She smells of decay, death, putrid, rotting flesh. The skin of her palms against his cheeks is mottled and rough, fingernails long and cracked and yellow, and when he can focus on her face, so close to his, he sees black skin pulled tight and thin over bone. Empty eye sockets and broken teeth.

He pushes away and scrambles backwards as she raises her body from the grave and comes for him, arms out as if beseeching, begging for an embrace. He can't stand it, this sight, this monstrosity, this horrific joke of his girl. With all the strength he has left he tries to pull himself out of the hole before she gets to him, before she touches him, but the sides of the grave are wet and there is nothing to hold on to. There is no way out.

Behind him he feels her hands entwine around his stomach. Her hot, foul breath is at his ear.

"Don't you want to stay with me, Jack?"

The voice is warped and rough, not hers, he knows this already. With renewed vigor he claws at the side of the grave, and this time he finds a place to hold – roots from that tree, sticking out and giving him leverage over the element of earth that surrounds him. Her corpse is still tugging at his legs and clothes, calling his name, asking him to stay with her. But he can't, he can't look at her, not when she's like that. Not when his guilt, the knowledge that this is all his fault, lies on him every moment.

Finally he reaches the top and scrambles to pull himself over the edge. He is almost there, almost out, that girl beneath him with her hands around his ankles but too weak to keep him down. The sky almost seems as if it is brightening, making way for his resurfacing. . . .

And then a shadow steps out from behind the trunk of the tree, and he knows it's over the minute he lays eyes on that face.

"It shoulda been you, Jay," Angelo says. "You know this is where you shoulda been. Not me. Not her. You."

Angelo kicks out one booted foot and strikes him right in the chest, knocking him back down into the grave, right into the coffin that sat empty.

From where he lies he looks up and sees the Italian, scar stretched taut across his skin.

"You can't cheat Death, Jay. It'll find you sooner or later . . ."

The rotting corpse of that girl climbs into the coffin with him, slides her form across his in a terrible mockery of the way she used to move, and then, just before closing the coffin lid, splits her cheeks wide in a grisly smile.

"It's you and me forever, now, Jack. Isn't this what you wanted?"

The coffin lid bangs closed and plummets him into darkness, the only sound the pattering of soil against his tomb as Angelo buries him alive.

* * *

He wakes shaking, gasping, his face wet with tears he can't remember shedding, and for the third night in a row it takes him until morning to fall back to sleep.

* * *

"You kin't go aftuh him, Mistuh Jay. It's too late."

"Too _late_? For death? Has he got _other_ appointments?"

Jay sat loading his gun, changed back into clothes that he recognized. The clothes from the night he'd died, his once-clean shirt stained ugly brown all the way down to the navel from where he'd bled. Eventually he'd have to get new ones. He had gone to the apartment and found it stripped bare, the only indication that he'd once lived there, once laughed there, once made love in one of those rooms, the gaping hole in the bathroom by the toilet that had never been fixed and a tiny jeweled earring, turquoise, that he found on the floor and slipped into his pocket. He thought he remembered his former self, the dead one, pressing his unscarred lips to a dainty earlobe on which those costume jewelry earrings had once dangled.

Willie shifted his weight and Jay was immensely annoyed to see that his black eyes were, once again, brimming with opalescent tears. He sighed heavily and pushed his hair from his face.

"Stop blubbering."

The talking came easier, now. It took a lot of awkward motions on behalf of his mouth to get the syllables out, and his cheeks bled when he did too much of it. They were at once painfully irritated, inflamed and strangely numb on the surface. Touching them with his fingertips, for instance, did very little in terms of pain. In fact, it was like he wasn't touching his face at all. Laughing, however, which he did so very often lately, uncontrollably, was something else entirely. Then the muscles themselves, in that delicate "healing" process, were yanked unceremoniously apart to accommodate their host's boundless mirth. It was give and take, Jay thought. Eventually they'd scab and then scar. Or not. He didn't really care, either way. As far as he was concerned, they'd be open wounds for as long as he lived.

"I bin meanin' tuh tell you, Mistuh Jay. You kin't kill Johnny 'cuz. . . . 'cuz my Missus . . . My Missus already done and did it fo' you."

His head snapped up just as his finished loading his bullets. This . . . . This was annoying, it was unfortunate, it was disappointing, it was . . . it was _funny_. Peyton Riley, mob princess, with her clickety-clackety heels and her coifed mass of blonde curls, offing the man who'd single-handedly ruined Jay's former life. Her. _Her!_ But she had said she wanted to do it herself. He just hadn't taken her at all seriously.

Suppressing the laughter at this intriguing turn of events by dragging his tongue along the ridges of his wounds that ran along the inside of his cheeks, Jay tapped his fingers on the butt of his gun and thought about what he was going to do _now_.

"Well? How'd she do it?"

Willie might have considered this tactless, but he didn't show it.

"She done tracked him down. A week ago. 'N . . . . dey were on duh docks. Him 'n three othuh Sabatinos. She shot duh othuhs 'n den my Missus just went on up and started fightin' wit' Johnny. Anguh like a demon from duh pits uh Hell, Mistuh Jay. She took him right on over into duh watuh, and . . . . and ain't neither of 'em came out agin."

The hulking man pulled out his large spotted handkerchief and blew his nose noisily, the tears finally spilling over. So Peyton Riley was dead, artlessly eliminated in her final act of retribution against the husband she had despised. So morbidly poetic. Jay liked it. Granted, the honor of snuffing the life out of the man who'd stolen every bit of saneness from him would have been beyond sweet. But, if it couldn't have been him, he was glad it had been Riley. If anyone else had the right to his murder, it was her. He just wished he had been there to clap as the last bubbles disappeared.

"So we'll go to the Sabatino warehouse and kill the rest of them." Jay looked up at Willie, who merely shrugged. His spirit, too, was broken. No more safety admonishments from dear, loyal Willie. What was there to _not_ die for, anymore? "Shouldn't be _too_ hard. I mean . . . I'm new at the job but, uh, I think one touch to the shoulder will suffice."

He grinned wickedly and Willie shivered at the visage.

"And if _that_ fails, I'm sure ripping out a few in_test_ines will get the job done."

The late Sean Riley had a number of weapons stored away in his old, abandoned warehouse. Jay didn't feel too horrible about slipping several knives of varying lengths into his jacket pockets in preparation for the storming of the castle. After all, it wasn't like old Sean would be coming back to claim them.

He chose to forgo most of the guns, because, after all, it was just so _quick_. Too quick. A split second of violently discharged and compact metal and then BLAM, blood and guts and brains and fragments of skull and it was all over, with no time to even appreciate it. It wasn't what those men deserved. When Jay stepped in front of them and let the light shine onto his mutilated face he wanted them to _feel_ the clammy hand of Death on their throats. He wanted them to _know_ that this, whatever happened next, had been coming from the minute they'd let Johnny Sabatino slip from their grasps for long enough to carve his cheeks and kill his girl.

This time he sat in the front seat with Willie, shotgun, which made Jack chuckle. In times like those, when he felt the laughter bubble up in his throat and spill out without restraint, Willie became very rigid and uncomfortable. Jay wasn't entirely sure why that was – wasn't laughter a _good_ sign? Better, surely, than rocking back and forth in a corner and peeling layers of your skin off and then eating them, which was, incidentally, what he felt like doing whenever he _didn't_ think of the hilarity of his unfortunate situation – but that, too, sort of amused him, and it only made him laugh harder. He wasn't totally used to how to do it in his new state, so the sound varied from a wheezing death rattle to a hyena-like crowing. A happy medium would, he hoped, emerge in time.

"You know what, Willie?"

Willie grunted softly.

"I, uh, I think I'm gonna get a suit like yours. You know, something real _spiffy_. What – What d'you think about that?"

"What'chu need a suit fo', Mistuh Jay?" Willie looked troubled, his brow creased and his fingers tight on the steering wheel as he navigated through wet streets. It'd been raining a lot. His girl, buried so far beneath of the earth's surface, would be drenched. He tried to remember the anatomy lessons he'd learned in school. What stage of decomposition would she be in right now? It'd been how many weeks – four, five? – so that would mean . . . He searched for the right answer, sucking at the edge of his mouth and swirling a loose stitch around the tip of his tongue. The embalmers in the Narrows did shit jobs, so he could assume that she wouldn't have been trussed up as she should have been, had she been in a cemetery by the Palisades. Knowing that, he guessed she would have gone through putrefaction by now. Black and regular, where the skin starts to collapse inward and all the slimy worms sneak in through the minuscule openings in the casket and start creeping onto flesh. His lips had been on that skin, once. If he closed his eyes and thought hard enough he could almost taste the sweetness of it on his tongue.

It was so cruel.

"I think it'll make me look, uh . . . . distinguished. Huh? Set me apar_t_." Jay shifted in his seat violently, readjusting the knives – some without sheaths and extremely sharp points – in his jacket. Thinking about his girl disturbed him. He was almost glad the most he could remember of her face was a blurry outline and bright eyes, because had he known more the dreams that came of rotting, walking corpses placing their mouths on him would have been unbearable.

"I dun't know 'bout dat. . ." Willie said, faltering. The dark eyes flickered over to Jay's face, the deep gashes around his mouth.

Oh, right. Distinguished men had unblemished faces. And a strong jaw, with a chin dimple, maybe.

They arrived at the warehouse at half past one, just when Willie had said the most men would be in attendance. Jay scrambled out of the car and stood rocking back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the building, clicking his tongue restlessly. Here it was. The first time he'd ridden here a buxom blonde with too much ambition had been waiting just inside for him. Her decomposition, at the bottom of Gotham's polluted waterfront, would be much more advanced than that of his girl's.

"Hey, you think Peyton's just covered in barnacles right now, Willie? Just getting _devoured_ by the scum of the ocean?" Willie blanched and placed his hand over his heart, looking both sick and broken. Jay cackled merrily and then rushed forward, darting through the dark shadows of the alley where Angelo had jumped him, in another life.

He slunk along the side of the building, creeping up to the back door. It was locked from the outside, bolted securely. There wasn't even any doorknob; nothing to gain leverage with. It was a neat trick to keep out anybody trying to sneak in to plan an attack, or just steal something (namely drugs). But Jay didn't need a doorknob to get himself in – he just needed somebody to come outside. And he happened to know, thanks to all of those poker games at Angelo's, that Beppe Artuso couldn't go more than thirty minutes without excusing himself for a smoke. Nobody was allowed to do so inside of the warehouse – lighting a flame in a place that frequently housed millions of dollars worth of drugs earned you a bullet to the head. Or at least it did in the time of Johnny Sabatino, and old habits died hard.

For all he knew, Jay and Willie had arrived at the minute Beppe had gone outside. He was geared up to wait for thirty, forty, fifty minutes (if the man was resilient). The night was softly warm and comfortable, not yet muggy, and Jay was completely at his leisure. After all, it wasn't like he had anywhere else to go. Any chance of prior engagements had been ripped unceremoniously from him by the people waiting just inside of those steel walls.

He didn't know how long it took. The seconds melted into the minutes and the minutes into what could have been hours, for all Jay knew. The sky didn't look any lighter or darker than when he'd started, so he figured it must not have taken all night.

Beppe finally came out of the door, the hinges screeching noisily, allowing Jay to slip backwards into the shadows unheard. With the toe of his boot the mobster held open the door and stuck a stray piece of board in, to keep it propped open for the duration of his smoke. Beppe cleared his throat and then spat a wad of phlegm onto the dirty street. From the back of his ear he pulled out a cigarette and stuck it between his lips, reaching for a book of matches that he had tucked into his back pocket. Jay watched him strike the match across the side of building opposite, that same wall he'd pushed Peyton Riley against. Every inch of Jay's body was tingling with rabid excitement, his fingers clenching spasmodically in anticipation.

He waited until the man's back was turned before darting out and hooking his arm around his mouth, to stifle the scream. Beppe flailed, flung out his limbs and struggled desperately to throw off his assailant, but he might as well have been a five year old girl throwing a tantrum for all the good it did. Jay had him pinned to the ground, his knee pressed against his spinal cord and his mouth to the other man's ear, in less than ten seconds.

"_Heeyyy_, Beppe. Remember _me_?"

The dark eyes flitted up to Jay's face and then widened in shock and fear. With Jay's hand over his mouth he couldn't speak, couldn't shout out. He made up for it with a violent shaking of his head, though Jay figured this must be in the hope to plead for his life rather than to deny that they'd ever met – after all, he could see the dawning of recognition on the other's face.

"It's kinda funny, because I . . . I sort of remember you swearing allegiance to Angelo and Peyton. I mean . . . Where _were_ you when Johnny slaughtered them? What about when he gave me these beauty marks? Had other things to do? Hm. Well. I'm glad you're _free_ at the moment, because I think we've got a _lot_ of catching up to do."

With a strangled laugh Jay sunk his chosen knife deep into the base of Beppe's spine. Throaty shrieks, without any viable outlet, filled the alleyway. Not enough to carry into the warehouse, which was the entire point, after all.

Blood flowed from the wound Jay had inflicted, but the screaming, he thought, fell a bit short. After all, when _he'd_ had a knife shoved through his flesh he'd screamed so loud he'd managed to rip the wounds open even farther. For good measure Jay twisted the blade a full one-eighty, hoping that he'd managed to shove his weapon in between some vertebrae, or perhaps pierced a sac of spinal nerves. If he was going to do the thing then dammit, he ought to do it properly.

Beppe thrashed beneath of Jay's weight, the shrieks coming shorter, more wildly, the dark eyes rolling in the sockets. He was taking a bit too long, of course. This one was supposed to be quick. There was no guarantee that the other mobsters would be inside for much longer, and with Beppe eternally indisposed from this night onward, it'd be hard to slip through the back way another time if he had to reschedule. With a quiet sigh he yanked the knife from Beppe's lower back and, just as the man sobbed throatily in relief, he plunged it deep into his neck.

Wiping his bloody hands and knife on the tail of Beppe's shirt – silk, unfortunately, so it didn't work quite as well as he'd hoped – Jay hurried over to the door and slipped inside, kicking the piece of wood out just in case Beppe came back as a zombie and decided to exact his revenge. He'd just have to use the front door, in that case.

With a casual tread Jay strolled through the hallways. His brain, that deadened part that had shut down from the moment Johnny's blade had pierced his lips, emitted grainy images of a former time, when the atmosphere had been tense and Angelo Sabatino was dead on the floor and Peyton Riley was still alive but deformed, just like him, just like Jay was now.

He found them in the conference room. Gino was serving coffee, mixed with a bit of alcohol, the winning combination that Jay and Angelo had ingested whenever they'd stayed late counting kilos. When Jay swung open the door, his gun out and ready to fire (he didn't know if they had their own pieces on them), nobody even looked up. They thought he was Beppe, back from a smoke.

"Oh, _goody_," he cooed in poorly suppressed glee. Gino looked up sharply and then dropped his pot of coffee. It smashed to the table and spilled muddy liquid all over the conference table, darkening the edges of formal looking documents. The other men surrounding the table – ten Sabatinos, or husbands of Sabatinos – stood up abruptly from their chairs, reaching for weapons and then looking around in horror when they realized, just as Jay had counted on, that they hadn't bothered to bring them into the room. "We're playing house. Looks like Gino's got the part of 'Little Woman' covered, but, uh, _I_ call pet gorilla."

He grinned, the stitches in his cuts tightening and tugging at his raw flesh. He knew he looked ghastly when he smiled, like a corpse come out to play, and at this moment he relished it; basked in its usefulness. The men surrounding the conference table backed up. One of them, a particularly young one with knobbly knees, nearly collapsed. Jay had never seen him before and could only assume that yet another of the Sabatino girls had hooked themselves a winner.

"Listen', Jay, we didn't do shit to you. Why don't you just turn around and leave us alone, huh? I swear we had nothin' to do with Johnny killin' Peyton and givin' you them cuts," Gino said, creeping towards a cabinet at the far side of the room, where Jay knew there were knives stashed.

"I'd stop inching if I were you," Jay suggested icily. "I mean, unless you want to end up like Freddie, there."

"What's wrong with Fred–"

Jay raised his gun and shot once, catching Freddie, a quiet man married to one of Johnny's second cousins, right beneath the eye. He fell in a crumple of limbs.

"Quite a few things, _now_." Jay said genially, making a sweeping arc with his gun, watching the men flinch as the barrel passed each one of them in turn. "And for the _rec_ord, did you have anything to do with him killing my girl? Because truth be told boys, I'm not. So. Happy . . . .About that."

"We didn't even know you _had_ a girl, Jay!" Gino croaked, his hands out in front of him in an expression of surrender as the muzzle of Jay's gun swung around to point directly at the center of Gino's chest.

"See, and_ that's_ your problem. You guys just don't _pay attention_." Jay clicked his tongue in admonishment and gave each surviving mobster a piercing, condescending glare. "For instance, you didn't seem to notice that when, two days ago, you got delivered a shipment of liquor for, well, _free_, the man giving the box to you was one of Peyton Riley's former bodyguards. _That _was a silly little oversight."

The men looked at each other from the corner of their wild eyes, admitting to the mistake soundlessly.

"And, uh, you didn't even seem to notice that your coffees smelled . . . a little bit _different_ than usual. You probably put it off to a bad brew, but the _real _reason was the cyanide that I slipped into the alcohol." Jay watched as this information sunk in, each of the mobsters turning, rather stupidly, to look at their empty cups. The same ones they'd just polished off a couple cups of poisoned coffee from. Their horrified visages sent Jay into peals of laughter. "I'll let you in on a little secret, so long as you _promise_ not to tell." Without waiting for an answer Jay lowered his voice in a mock whisper and continued, "I got the idea from an Agatha Christie novel. It's my guilty pleasure."

The men around the table began to look frantic, began to murmur that it was all a joke, a lie, a scam, that they weren't really going to die.

"Oh, you _are_. No doubt about that. But . . . how long it will take will vary, depending. Maybe you've only got minutes left. Maybe an hour. I bet a few of you are starting to feel a bit . . . _strange_ . . . by now."

At least three of the men were becoming sweaty, flushed cherry red, and breathing heavily from something other than fear.

"Yeah_ . . . _It's, uh . . . It's gonna _hurt_."

He smiled, exultant, triumphant. "But hey, at least you'll be able to say your goodbyes. I . . . _I_ never got that chance."

His grip tightened around his gun. It'd been at least forty minutes since the initial drop off. By now the job had to be done, save for that one back alley door that he'd slipped through. With a final glance around the room at the men he'd effectively killed, he turned to leave. He heard Gino rush to the weapons cabinet, but by the time his fumbling fingers had managed to find the right combination to the padlock, Jay was already gone, stopping only to pocket a deck of cards nearly identical to the one he'd seen Johnny playing with on the first night he'd entered this building. It was done without thinking, really, that dark place of his mind, the dead one, compelling him to do so without much reason at all. The same way the stump from a severed limb still tingled years after it'd been separated permanently from its host.

He slipped through the door he'd come from and slammed it behind him. Willie was waiting, a blowtorch in hand and a protective helmet covering his face. As soon as the door swung shut he went to work, melding the metal of the door shut, rendering it unusable.

"All shut? Power lines to the shipment entrances cut?" Jay asked. Willie nodded but didn't speak.

"_Fan_-tastic."

Willie finished working and then the two men stood, listening to the sounds of screaming and pounding as the mobsters inside of the building realized they'd been trapped inside, nothing but each other and certain death for company.

And in the darkness Jay laughed, until the very last shout resonated and then died away.

* * *

The problem with executing a job that had, up until that point, occupied all of your time, is that once it's done, no matter how wonderfully it was pulled off, there is always a sense of disappointment and unease.

Such as, as soon as Jay returned to the Riley warehouse with Willie in tow. So the Sabatinos were all but eliminated. The first real crime family in Gotham taken out in one fell swoop by a poor kid from the wrong side of town. And it was glorious to listen to them plead with their gods; to hear them sobbing as they clawed at the metal until their hands bled; to listen to them shoot their guns off uselessly at the metal doors as they choked and vomited and cried out in agony as the poison took effect.

But then what? It was over. The people who had ruined him were all dead; the people he loved were all dead; even his former self was dead. What was there left to do? What sort of purpose did he have, now, now that his revenge had been executed seamlessly, efficiently? Part of him wished it hadn't been so damn _easy_. If it had taken years, say, he could have occupied himself wonderfully with destructive and bubbling rage, swearing vengeance and grinding his teeth at the thought of his enemies. _Count of Monte Cristo_ style. But they had fallen like flies, gullible fools who didn't even check to see that the protective seal wrapped around the necks of the alcohol bottles was made from different paper than usual, a clear sign it had been meticulously replaced.

He could have used guns, of course. But again, that was just so artless. It didn't give one quite as much satisfaction. There were no agonizing yells. No death rattles. Just a gurgle, maybe, if you hit them in the right place. How dull.

Knives had been an option, of course, and slicing them all into little bits, drawn and quartered, had been an incredibly appealing thought. Then again, ten against one was just plain stupidity, and even if they hadn't had weapons there was no guarantee they couldn't wrestle his from him.

He'd definitely entertained the idea of blowing the building up. The sight of flames licking the sky, the smell of burning drugs and human flesh, would have been like an aphrodisiac to him. The problem with that plan was the placement of explosives or flammable liquids that didn't draw attention, and were strong enough to take down an entire steel building, denying any route of escape. Also, he wouldn't have been able to do his big reveal in that circumstance, and the looks on those mobsters' faces when they realized what he'd done, what they'd brought on themselves by crossing him, was priceless.

So yes, he'd done the thing properly. And yes, it had been the first crowning moment of his new life. And sure, he had enjoyed it with every fiber of his being. But the question after the act was still the same:

Now what?

Now he sat with Johnny's pack of cards in front of him, unopened, and he contemplated on everything he did not have. He wondered what he'd be doing now, if his girl was still alive. If Willie had gone to find her that night and brought her to him, or taken him to his own apartment to tend to him . . . . Would she still love him, the way he was? Would she be able to look at him, touch his slit cheeks, kiss the edges of his swollen lips, without feeling repulsed? From what he remembered he guessed that she would have, even if it was hard. And it was. Sometimes he would look at himself in the mirror after showering and it was like he had forgotten for a moment what had happened, and it all came crashing back at the sight of his reflection, and even he was horrified.

"I feel bettuh knowin' dem bastuhds dat treated my Missus so bad are gone 'n dead," Willie announced solemnly. "Ain't you feelin' bettuh, Mistuh Jay?"

No, he wasn't.

"To be honest, Willie . . . I'm _bored_."

"Bored, Mistuh Jay?"

Jay sighed gustily. "Yeah. I mean . . . What's the _point_? What is there left to _do_, now?"

Willie seemed incredibly bemused by this question, and he sat mouthing the words over to himself silently, in a comical representation of the half-witted bodyguard.

"I guess . . . livin', Mistuh Jay."

"_Living_?" Jay snorted derisively. "And what? Go into the city and get a job? With these?" He gestured violently at his face, and Willie flinched and looked down at his feet. Jay let out a sharp bark of laughter. "Like I said. What's the point?"

"Maybe it dun't seem like there's no point in livin' now, Mistuh Jay, but you kin't just give up 'cuz uh one day."

Jay disagreed. What was the point in living if every day would be banal and disgustingly ordinary? No sweet smelling girl or happy-go-lucky sister . . . His old self had worked for them, had planned around them, had hoped with them. Now, though . . . He had effectuated the one thing he'd believed himself to have survived Johnny's attack for – namely, wreaking justice on the Sabatinos – and there was no reason to continue on.

His finger tapped against the deck of cards in front of him and he stood, an idea blossoming in his head.

"All right, Willie. Let's, uh, leave my fate up to the _cards_, then." Jay smiled gaily and opened the deck. Willie just looked confused and a bit anxious.

"What'chu mean, Mistuh Jay?"

"I _mean_ . . . Ace, Jack, King, or Queen and I put this gun up to my head and say 'Goodbye, cruel world'; two through ten and I plunge into the fold of everyday life and try to live it on the straight and narrow. How about that? I'll even go back to school and get my diploma."

Willie shook his head violently, but Jay was decided. It was, after all, so perfect. True, there was a much higher chance of getting a 'straighten up' card, but the randomness of leaving it up to chance made up for that little drawback. He'd learned to give in to whatever Fate had in store for him. If he had a purpose higher than the one he'd already acted out then the cards would reflect it.

Carefully he removed the cards from the pack and shuffled them seven times to ensure complete randomness, taking caution to avoid looking at any of the cards. Willie watched with bated breath as Jay put the shuffled and straightened deck out in front of him and reached for the top card. He waited for a breath, giggled as Willie twitched nervously, and then flipped it over.

**JOKER.**

Jay sneered and said, "The wild card. Well, let's take another shot, then."

The second card followed the first, and Jack squinted down at the form of a jester in disbelief.

**JOKER.**

There were only two per deck, usually. Meaning that he'd happened to get unlucky. So much for the whole idea of shuffling seven times.

With growing irritation that his inspired plan was not going at all how he'd wanted, Jay reached out and flipped the third card over.

**JOKER.**

Jay growled in frustration and grabbed up the entire deck, tossing out card after card after card.

The fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth – **JOKER, JOKER, JOKER, JOKER, JOKER.**

He threw the remaining deck onto the table and scavenged through all the cards. They were all jokers. He had, without knowing, grabbed a deck made entirely out of the wild cards Johnny had removed from his games of Solitaire. For a moment after this dawned on him he sat unmoving, his hands outstretched and buried in scattered deck, as if wondering what it all meant.

Then, trembling slightly, Jay picked up one of the cards, bringing it close to his face and examining it assiduously.

A clown dressed in green and purple with a white, painted face, dark eyes, and a wide, wild red smile that stretched up to the ears . . . .

Unconsciously he ran his tongue over the insides of the lacerations, and a smile spread out across his face. This wasn't chance; this was _fate._

And oh, it was perfect.

"Nevermind," Jay said slowly, simultaneously reaching into his jacket. "I, uh . . . I think I've got my answer."

Willie let out a breath of relief and said, "Good, Mistuh Jay. Yo' whole futuh shouldn't be left up tuh . . . . Mistuh Jay?"

Willie's eyes widened as he spotted Jay's gun in his hand, and his frenzied gaze met Jay's own steady one with a searching, pleading question.

Jay pointed the gun straight at his giant friend, the man who had single-handedly saved him from death, and said, "Sorry, Willie, but I think that from now on . . . . this is gonna have to be a _solo_ act."

And just as the black man scrambled for his own weapon Jay fired once, twice, three times, until Willie was dead on the floor.

Without a backward glance, Jay left the Riley warehouse for the last time, a single **JOKER** card tucked into his pocket.

* * *

Morning was just blooming in a cemetery across town. The graves stood upright, backs to the sunlight, casting long shadows that gave the appearance of five hundred fresh holes, waiting to be filled by a corpse. The only place in that graveyard that did not broadcast death was the area surrounding a tiny, withered tree, its branching drooping low to the ground as if burdened by some heavy weight. It rarely bloomed, and if it did the buds were feeble and discolored. The very fact that itwas_ alive_ demonstrated its resilience, however; after all, very little vegetation grew in the Narrows.

The graveyard supervisor looked up at the tree, and then down at the two fresh graves which had just been buried beneath it. It'd been a sad little funeral underneath of a sad little tree, with a single little girl – no older than his Julie, at home – shaking as if the chill of Death itself was upon her as she mouthed the priest's words along with him. She'd had two feeble yellow daisies – barely bloomed – that she'd placed on both heaps of earth, respectively. The second she lingered over, swayed, and the priest had caught her just before she crumpled.

For three weeks the graves had been bare, but the tombstones had arrived that morning. He'd seen that same girl walk through the gates and sit waiting on the ground, just in between the two, until the shipment came in and the men put the headstones in place. He hadn't known who it was that had died. Her parents, he supposed. A mugging or a burning building or a murder-suicide – nothing was off limits in this place.

He had watched her reach out and trace the names, bow her head, saw her shoulders shaking. And after she had left, weaving in between the uneven aisles of crumbling stones, the graveyard supervisor had succumbed to his curiosity and strolled over to learn who it was she'd been mourning for.

They stood side-by-side beneath of that sad, weeping little tree, and when he saw the names and dates and realized how very young they both had been, the graveyard supervisor felt a little like weeping himself.

**

* * *

**

**Lola Marie Napier **

**March 7****th****, 1983 -** **May 2n****d****, 1998 **

**Beloved Sister & Friend **

* * *

**Jack Edward Napier**

**November 8th****, 1980 - April 25****th****, 1998**

**Beloved Brother & Friend**

* * *

**End of Part I. **


	21. Chapter 21

**Grave:**

**Part II:**

_Louise_

or

_- Clawing to the Surface -_

_"O, hark! what mean those yells and cries? His chain some furious madman breaks; He comes-I see his glaring eyes: Now, now, my dungeon grate he shakes. Help! Help! He's gone!-O fearful woe, Such screams to hear, such sights to see! My brain, my brain,-I know, I know I am not mad but soon shall be."_

_~Matthew Gregory Lewis_

* * *

There are two moss-covered graves that rest in a small cemetery just on the edge of that derelict place called "The Narrows" in Gotham City. Both tombstones are wrapped in creeping vegetation, sparse during the fall and winter; particularly leaf-strewn during the spring and summer. Both graves sit beneath a lone tree with a bare trunk and flimsy looking branches that bloom pale pink and white for around one week in the spring, on a good year. The two graves lie side-by-side, peaceful, solitary, separate from the rest of the graves. The engraving on both carves out an identical last name and a similar date of death. To the casual observer the graves would indicate nothing more than two related people, one girl and one boy, who passed away at relatively young ages both. There is only one living person who knows the deep chasm of difference that exists between those two graves. There is only one person living who knows that while the first grave holds the body of a girl whose suffering has ended forever, the second holds nothing – nothing but an empty hole and an empty coffin and an empty closure to anybody who knew the young man who was supposed to rest there.

There is only one person who knows that Jack Napier does not reside in the grave that marks his final resting place. Only one person who acknowledges that he lives but does not live; he died but did not die; he is everywhere and nowhere at all; he is everything and nothing. There is only one person who knows this, and she is the only one who would care to know it; she is the only person who would care to visit those two graves that sit peaceful and unnoticeable at the edge of a city which deals in chaos and obtrusiveness.

There is only one person who knows five year's worth of information concerning a young man who disappeared in a flurry of desperation and foolishness and was pronounced legally dead one year later, though his tombstone already sat above the coffin that was lowered into the ground with the rest of his possessions long before that date. There is only one person left who knows, who would still know, the exact way that young man stood and breathed and laughed and existed.

There is only one living person who knows all this, but she may not be living for much longer. Because some mysteries are better left unsolved; some secrets are better left six feet under.

Some things are better when they're kept in the grave.

* * *

Louise Speller was unsure about returning to Gotham City after ten long years of steadfast absence. In truth she could not explain to herself why she had finally decided to take that completely unnecessary plunge. She told herself that it was founded purely on the basis of an opportunistic career choice, but she knew that this was false. Metropolis had twice the number of safe, reliable jobs that offered her position – in fact, she was quite certain that it would have been a smarter choice to remain where she was, considering the extreme likelihood that at any given moment she may step into a building in Gotham City that just happened to be rigged to blow.

No, though she told herself that the move was meant to help her professionally, financially, and maybe even socially, she could not deny that what she was _really_ returning to Gotham for was the graves.

She hadn't seen them since the day she'd left. One last goodbye; one last, lingering look before she turned her back on her past and rushed into her future without so much as one inkling about what she would do or where she would go. She only knew that she could not stay, could not be tempted to go back to that cemetery and stare at the two names she had known, of the only two people she had ever truly loved. One day she might sit and stare and become so immersed in death that she forgot that she herself was still living, still breathing. Leaving was the best choice. It was the only choice. Without those two people there was no point in staying in Gotham. No point in trying to pretend that they hadn't breathed in that air and walked those streets. So she'd left, and she thought that had been the end of it. But it wasn't.

The desire to return had rose up in her steadily for the past three years, smothering her little by little with repressed nostalgia and forcefully-forgotten memories. Her fear had kept her away, that terrifying prospect of walking back into the city that _he_ had been apart of – Gotham was almost like a dream to her, and for the longest time the idea of going back and not finding him there was almost inconceivable to her. But time had changed her, and while the pain was more so dulled than lessened she felt that now she could handle it. Felt that now, after all this time, she had to. It was shameful that the graves had gone so long unattended; so long bare. She was ashamed of how fast she had ran from them. Now they seemed to call out to her, ghostly whispers at night that beckoned her onwards towards the city that she had once believed she could not stand to set foot in again.

The graves were the only legitimate reason Louise had for leaving her present and future behind and returning to her past, partially in hopes of digging it back up and reliving it again, and maybe this time getting it right.

So she was understandably dismayed when things did not work out the way she had initially planned.

"I'm sorry, I don't understand. You're saying that the Narrows is . . ."

"Closed off, that's right."

Louise shifted her purse from one shoulder to the other. The police station she was standing in was crowded and it stunk of crime and metallic iron bars and stale paperwork that sat on desks for weeks. On the wall next to her there was a cluttered board tacked onto the wall, innumerable pictures of wanted criminals, rapists, murderers, robbers, serial killers, broadcasted for every entering person to see. She turned her eyes away from them. She did not want to see their faces.

"I'm trying to get to a cemetery. I have family buried there and I'd like to visit their graves."

The man she was speaking to had a bored look on his face. His beard was scruffy and full of crumbs, his suit wrinkled and stretched taut over his gut. It didn't seem like he cared very much about what deceased family she had. Perhaps she'd been living in Metropolis too long, city of hospitality and fine moral character. The adjustment back to Gotham was slow going, apparently. Was it worse or had she just forgotten how soulless it really was?

"I'm sorry, Miss, but like I said, the Narrows is a quarantined area for the vast majority of the public. It's an extension of Arkham Asylum, now. Nobody in and pray to God nobody gets out."

A shiver passed over her at the mention of the infamous asylum, but she wouldn't be deterred by such a small setback. She had uprooted her entire life to come back to this place, to face her demons. Now that she was here she couldn't be told that her demons were delayed.

"There must be some exception . . . An honest human being couldn't consciously deny me my right to pay my respects to the dead. It's almost sacrilegious."

The man merely shrugged. "I dunno all about what it is, but I do know that it's protocol to deny any request for admittance unless you come with one hell of a reason and a nice official permit. So far we're only allowing those who operate at Arkham, government officials, and cops like myself to access the island. Sorry lady, but you're just going to have to light a candle for them in church if you want to get your respects in."

Louise sighed, the disappointment washing over her in waves. So this was what all of those pangs of purpose she had felt late at night came to? One huge dead end. What had been the point of all those lingering senses of resolve she had felt at night; that violent belief that she had unfinished business here? She had thought, so damn foolishly, that she was _meant_ to come back here. It seemed like one huge laughing joke on the part of Gotham City – they had built it, she had come, but when she arrived there were no ghosts playing baseball . . . . only dry cornfields for as far as they eye could see.

"There isn't any way I could get myself permission . . .?" Louise began, leaning closer over the counter and opening her eyes wide in a pleading expression.

"Why I'll be damned! Look who it is!"

Louise straightened, the inner awareness that told you somebody was directing a comment towards you making her turn and look for the source of the voice. It sounded rather familiar, with a slight Southern twang that seemed to tug at her memory from long past, though she couldn't imagine why . . . it wasn't the lilting twitter of Lola's voice and it wasn't _his _voice, that forceful alto that sent her limbs trembling, and those were the only two voices she really cared to hear calling out to her. They were the ones that never would.

A slim figured and long-legged woman stood in front of her. Her pressed and pleated khaki slacks and cashmere sweater set spoke of wealth and the succinct tone of her voice separated her immediately from the rest of the common people milling around the police station. Her face was pretty but normal, with no distinct characteristics to set her out and jog the memory. In fact, if it wasn't for the hair – the pixie cut mass of gleaming, vivid red curls – she might not have recognized her at all. But Louise did recognize that hair, and that accent suddenly found meaning and even a name that she could attach it all to.

"Sydney . . . Sydney White," said Louise haltingly. Was it White? Or was it something else, something similar? Perhaps another color like Grey or Black or Greene? The red-head grinned wide, revealing teeth that Louise was certain used to be much more uneven and slightly less gleaming.

"Oh honey, it's Carroway now." She held out one manicured hand and wiggled long fingers. A diamond ring and silver band glinted dully in the dim light of the station. "Married for five years now. Isn't it fantastic?"

The enthusiasm was just right and Louise got the feeling that this wife – privileged though she may be – really did love her husband. It was nice, in a way, that she had married for love and just happened to get the money along with it. So few relationships happened that way. Usually you married for love and accepted having no money or you married for money and lamented the fact that you had no love. It was almost unfair that somebody out there had managed to acquire both.

"That's great. But what are you doing in this place?" Louise asked as she came closer, snapping open a clutch tote and pulling out a sharply cornered calling card. She slid it over to the man behind the front desk.

"Tell someone to call me if you hear anything back, would you?" Sydney requested absently before turning back to Louise and shaking her short tomato-red hair out of harried eyes. "Oh it's been dreadful, let me tell you. I went up to visit my hubby and bring him some lunch and when I came out my car – I drove the Benz up myself, of course – was gone, poof, vanished! Some damn fool went and stole it in broad daylight and nobody even said one thing to stop him. But that's Gotham City for you, isn't it? Though I do declare that it's never been quite this bad in the daytime, before."

The man behind the desk watched the two of them speaking and then cut in, "Well, at least we don't have some murderer masquerading as our savior these days. Things can only get better from here on out – once the city realizes that the police are back in charge."

Sydney Carroway laughed airily and there was a note of definite coolness in her voice as she snapped back, "Oh, _are_ you in control? You tell that to the owner of the chop shop you find the remains of my car at, will you?"

Louise raised her eyebrows as the man went beet red and spluttered in indignation. Sydney turned away from him without another word and placed one large hand on Louise's arm. "What are you doing now, dear? Why don't we go have a few drinks someplace and catch up?"

Louise had nothing to do and nowhere to go except back to her cluttered apartment and unpack. She hadn't even set up her bedframe yet, which meant that for the time being she would be napping on a mattress that was laid flat on the floor. Which was fine, but it would probably matter a lot less once she had a few martinis in her. Besides, she hadn't seen Sydney for ten years, not since the day of their graduation from St. Katherine's, when the willowy ginger had hugged her tightly and told her to "take care of herself and whoever else might _come along_", though Louise hadn't had any idea what she meant by that. She had been too distraught to care very much. Graduation had come only three weeks after Lola had died. Four weeks after _he_ had disappeared. Three weeks after she had heard that he wouldn't be coming back. Their tombstones had come in the very next morning, and she had left that afternoon.

"Sure," Louise replied, hiking up her purse onto her shoulder and turning back to the man behind the desk. He still looked as though he was trying to formulate a biting reply to Sydney's slight. "I'm going to come back in a couple of days to ask again about this. Mention it to a superior of yours, please? I'm very adamant about getting into that graveyard."

The man grunted and looked down at his paperwork. She guessed that she would probably have to go through this entire process again when she returned. Still, it was worth it if at the end she could lower herself onto the ground in front of those two graves and trace her fingers along the names that she hadn't spoken aloud, consciously, in a decade.

* * *

"You fairly disappeared from the face of the planet after graduation. I tried to get in contact with you, you know – I even went and hunted down your mama, but she told me that you'd taken off without a word to anybody. It was the darndest thing. I couldn't make heads or tails of it."

Louise swirled around her drink with her straw and stared across the high-top table at Sydney, who was making her way through her second vodka lemonade. She didn't look as though she was drunk in the least, though her accent had thickened and her posture had relaxed to the point where she was actually leaning with her elbows on the table, something sophisticated Sydney would probably never do.

"I just had to get away for a while," Louise replied softly, taking a drink of her Long Island iced tea and readjusting herself on her stool. Sydney looked at her with the timeless sort of sympathizing smile that made you believe she just understood without having to be told. She wondered if Sydney might have found out what happened. If she had gone to her mother there was a chance that she did know, even though what Louise had told her mother was limited to begin with. "Get away from all of this . . . Gotham . . . the Narrows. God, it was no place to live."

"I don't blame you. I live over in the Palisades, now, and I absolutely despise coming into the city most of the time. Especially for the past year or so – good Lord, but I couldn't even get on a plane back to Georgia fast enough this time last year! It was like hell had come to town, literally."

She knew what Sydney was speaking about. Even Metropolis, the City of Light, tasted the darkness when the Joker emerged. They had been sheltered, they had been complacent and assured of their safety, they had been unwilling to intervene, but they had been appalled.

"But things are better now, aren't they?" she asked Sydney, who rolled her grey eyes with exasperation and slapped her palm down flat on the table. "They locked the Joker up at Arkham Asylum months ago."

"Better! Now that we haven't even got Batman running around and scaring the living daylights out of thieves? No, things aren't better. We may not have a Joker threatening to blow us all up, but without Batman? Let's just say that Gotham is geared to turn into one huge Narrows if something doesn't change, and fast."

Louise licked her lips free of any lingering alcohol and nodded absently, letting her eyes wander around the smoke-filled bar they had gone to. It was a higher class place than most, which guaranteed at least moderate protection while they were out drinking, though that was never completely assured in Gotham. She didn't really know what to say to Sydney regarding the Batman, that elusive masked vigilante who less than half of the city adored and the rest abhorred. She hadn't been around when he first appeared on the scene and she hadn't been around when the murder of Harvey Dent took place, though it was hard for Louise to believe that anybody who killed somebody as good as the former district attorney could mean anything but harm. Still, Batman wasn't her hero – they had their own over in Metropolis.

"So you're married," said Louise, changing the subject and looking down at the white hand that was wrapped around a perspiring glass. The jewel was large and pink, with smaller white diamonds surrounding it. It must have cost fifty thousand at least. Her own ring finger tingled in its nakedness, and Louise's right hand absently covered her left, almost in a show of embarrassment.

"Mmm, five years this September. We had a fall wedding down in my home town. The foliage was just extraordinary. His name is Nicholas and he's the CEO of a plastic business with one foot in the stocks and bonds door – like everybody else's husband, I suppose!" Sydney laughed shortly and blew her wispy bangs out of her eyes. Louise didn't mention how very unlike 'everybody else's husband' Nicholas Carroway was. "We live over in the Palisades. Four acres. I raise my own horses and I give all the little kids lessons on how to ride them. They just love getting ponies for their birthdays."

Sydney took another drink, a content little smile on her face. Louise took another sip of her own drink and then asked, "So do you have kids, Syd?"

She shook her head violently, hair bobbing. "Oh Lordy, no! No, I'm not ready for that yet. Nick's trying to get me to come around to the idea but it's just not for me right now."

Louise nodded and swirled her drink around again, her eyes scanning around and examining groups of laughing, tipsy people. Her eyes landed on a man near the bar who had just sat down to order, shrugging off his suit jacket and rolling up the sleeves of his button-down, revealing wiry forearms and broad shoulders which tapered down to thin, thin hips. Her skin tingled and she forced herself to look away.

"And what about you? You must have a man in your life. Kids?"

Louise smiled wanly and replied, "There's been a few men. But none were very serious. No kids."

Sydney laughed and then leaned closer, her voice lowering to a conspiratorial whisper. "Well most of the girls said, when you left, that the reason you'd disappeared so quick was because you . . . got into trouble. You know. With that boy you were with for all those years. We figured that you were expecting and he left you, so you skipped town. It made sense at the time; you looked so awful for that last month. But it's obvious we were wrong, now."

She wondered if she should be bothered by the fact that most of her classmates thought that she had gotten pregnant and then gotten ditched and then ran away to avoid any judgement. Louise found that the only problem she had with that scenario was that it wasn't true. Better abandoned by him with his child than left by him forever, alone, with nothing.

"Whatever happened to that boy, anywho? You were so in love with him I was sure you'd run off and get married as soon as we got out of school. It was all sort of romantic, seeing as he was so poor and didn't even finish high school and everything."

The pleasant reminiscing of the evening was over – here was the part that she dreaded, the part she had run away to avoid all those years ago. The truth. The two words that would cement the reality of the situation again, over and over, stabbing at her heart with every syllable. But she could say them, now. They hurt, they would always hurt, but she could say them.

"He died."

* * *

"Care for a smoke, gorgeous?"

He had Jack's hips. Narrow, just the type that drove her wild. Men with large limbs, bulging with muscle, did nothing for her. They almost repulsed her. It was the skinny ones – no, perhaps not _skinny_, but definitely trim, definitely lean – who caught her eye. Because they looked like him. If she closed her eyes, they could almost be him.

She figured why the hell not take a smoke and leaned towards him. The man placed the thin cylinder gently between her lips, and she raised her hand to wrap around it. It wasn't like she smoked often, more for her own amusement than an addiction. When she felt like it. Never enough to crave it constantly. She only craved one thing constantly, and that was quite enough.

Louise inhaled and then, with a flourish, sent a smoke ring floating towards the ceiling. Hovering, grey and wispy, tendrils snaking out and undulating through the air. It was a ghostly thing, beautiful in a sad, captivating way that, for whatever reason, made her ache.

"That's a neat trick. Where did you learn how to do that?"

"France," she said.

"Oh, so you're French? I kinda thought you might –"

"No," she interrupted, taking another drag. "I'm not."

"Oh . . . ."

There was a silence between them, Louise staring at the slow burning filter tip of the cigarette in her hand. The ash glowed red, shuddered at the ends, and then flaked downwards beside her, sprinkling onto the floor. Two drags, and she was already bored. "Here," she said, "Have your cancer stick back."

He took it gratefully, inhaling long and unnecessarily hard. When he exhaled he let out a low groan and closed his eyes, supremely satisfied. Sated.

"So what were you in France for, then?"

She could ignore this, like she did most times. Idle conversation, so out of place in situations like these. But she didn't feel like going back to her bare apartment just yet, so with an inward shrug she sighed and engaged herself. "I studied abroad. For college. I was there for a year and a half."

"Sounds fun. I dunno if I could stay there. All those wimpy croissants, and, ugh, _snails_. I'm a meat and potatoes man, myself." He took another puff. "But hey," he said through a billow of cigarette smoke, "to each his own."

"Because everyone knows that France _only_ offers croissants and snails on their menus," she said bitingly.

"Right," he said, noticing nothing. "No pizza, even."

"Mmm. You'd have to go to Italy for that, right?"

"Yeah. See, that's why I love America. We're the melting pot. No goddamned Commies are gonna tell _us_ what foods we can and can't have." He inhaled again, almost savagely this time, and Louise rolled her eyes. So he was one of _those_. How unpleasant.

It was clear to her that it was about that time. The time when she stood and made up some weak excuse and then left, leaving a small bit of her dignity behind her. This time she barely found it necessary to say a thing. She simply stood and retrieved her scattered clothing from the floor and began to dress. His eyes were on her, watching her movements, but she hardly minded. The remorse and disgust wouldn't hit her until the morning; she knew that from many long years of practice.

"Hey, maybe it's not my place. . . ."

She braced herself for some asinine comment, or else a misguided attempt to try to get her to call him in a few days.

"But who's Jack?"

In the midst of pulling up her zipper she froze. Stared dumbly out of his bedroom window. It wasn't a nice view. The side of the building right next door. All grey brick and curtained windows.

"What did you say?"

"Jack. You said his name while we were going at it. I mean, hey, I don't judge. But I'm kinda curious why a girl like you would be pinin' over a guy who don't want her when she could get anyone. Well, almost anyone. Some guys prefer blondes. Or girls with bigger tits."

A feeling of constriction seized her chest. His inane comments, those tactless jabs, infuriated her. She turned around and snatched up her purse from the bed side table, glaring down at his naked body, displayed carelessly, not even covered by a sheet. In this harsh lighting she realized it didn't look half as much like Jack's as she had originally believed.

"None of your goddamned business."

As she swept out of his apartment, shoes swinging from one hand to quicken her exit, she reflected grimly on the fact that no matter how many men she found who had a body that resembled _his_ body, she could never, _ever_ find someone who had his magnificent mind.

* * *

**A/N:** So this is it. Part II. It's taken a while but I _think_ I'm starting to hit my stride. We'll see, anyway. Sydney was pretty much the only friend of Louise's that was even mentioned during the first part of the story. Because it was told from Jack's POV I didn't go much in depth about her school life – that was her business after all, and something I didn't think Jack would be much interested in. So you'll get a nice little glimpse into the character that, I think, you haven't seen before. Plus, as you can see, she's a bit different than she was in the first part . . . . What do you think?

Depending on what you guys think of this I might change my mind about the tone/direction of the story. So, yeah, feedback is pretty important on this one!

And on that note, I'm still replying to all your great reviews from chapter twenty! I just couldn't wait to get this one up. : D


	22. Chapter 22

**A/N:** So, this is . . . . messy. Not my best work. And holy shit, is it long. And not long in the good way like, packed with action or boobies or whatever you kids like these days. This is the filler chapter of all filler chapters - Sure, it does some good stuff. Introduces you to one or more characters (there IS a point), and more importantly, gets you acclimated to Louise. But um . . . no Joker . Sorry guys. Part of the reason I didn't separate it is because I knew you are all impatient for the Joker to appear. So, a necessary evil, let's say. Enough chit-chat! Try not to fall asleep and remember to review!

P.S ~ Badass response to the last chapter, guys! I love all my new reviewers! And my old ones!

* * *

_"Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before."_

~_Edgar Allan Poe_

* * *

As a young girl, Louise Speller entertained herself with ideas of growing up into a generous beneficiary, a force of good, perhaps even an advocate for underprivileged children, such as she had been. Such as _he_ had been. Such as Lola had been, in all of her sickness, in all of her helplessness.

Back then the idea was a strong one, a burning light inside of her. Inextinguishable. Persistent. It made her who she was; it crafted character out of her timid and uncertain flesh and gave her a solid form. This idea, this belief, this assurance – it gave her meaning. It gave her purpose. It gave her a hope for the future when all else was black and hollow.

When Lola was dying, still she felt that light flicker and burn. Lola's death hadn't felt like a loss, but, rather, a premeditated retreat. Good leaders, after all, are singular in their own ability to discern when it is best to surrender. What is best for the war is sometimes relinquishing a battle, especially one that has been going on for so long and only serves to continue an agony that should have been assuaged years ago.

When Lola died, the light burned on.

Then Jack was murdered, ripped away, a brutal, underhanded attack which left her winded. Just as she waved her white flag, admitted defeat, gave up the long fight and looked forward into brighter days. Just then, her sky went black.

Johnny Sabatino snuffed out her sunlight; stole away all of her oxygen.

And everyone knows lights can't burn without air.

* * *

"You're late."

Late, hungover, and with flat hair and wrinkled clothes she'd worn the day before. The first impressions are always the best ones.

"Right, I'm sorry, the city is just . . . so large. It's confusing –"

"Whatever, here." The woman shoved a clipboard full of product information at Louise, who fingered through it, her head pounding. The secretary who was showing her to the meeting Louise was already running exactly twelve minutes late for, was short, unbelievably slender, and unruffled. She had the sort of pretty face which defied any sort of imperfection, with the exactly plump-enough lips and toned-all-over thighs which didn't jiggle even in the midst of the coked-out power walk she was currently undertaking.

"You're lucky that you speak French, you know. I mean, God! I could have had your job if _my _school had told me it would get me fistfuls of cash to just sit in a meeting with some of the most powerful people _in the world_ and repeat what they said. But no, they told me that _Spanish_ was the language of the future. As if repeating what America's favorite day-laborers and factory slumdogs say will get me anywhere in life, except to the wrong fucking destination when I ask for directions."

"Uh . . ."

"So, your _undeserved_ functionary position at Dubois & Co. is to be our official translator in all business meetings, phone calls, luncheons, dinners, e-mails, etc. . . . As you know, Monsieur Dubois operates this American branch of his multinational, billion-dollar electronics industry from France. He hates coming here, so most of the time you'll translate directly for him via video conference or conference call. A little warning: you'd better get well-versed on French swears, because boy does he use them. Left, here."

Louise didn't think she'd have a problem with not knowing French swear words – after all, she had spent a solid fourteen months rolling around in the dregs of French society. One late afternoon with her study-abroad roommate (her now closest friend, Mollie Singleton,) probably exposed her to the sort of dirty French words that would have Monsieur Dubois blushing.

"When Monsieur Dubois is too busy to chew out my bosses for whatever mistake they've made this month, you'll be speaking to his representatives, most who also – surprise! – don't speak a bit of English. Or pretend they don't just to be difficult, hell if I know."

They passed through a wide hallway lined on one side by conference rooms and on the other, a whirring and noisy field of cubicles. People swarmed around with important memos, or ruffled through an endless stack of papers on their desks, or pressed one of two dozen blinking buttons on a phone pad and cooed "Dubois and Company, hold please", before pressing the mute button, chugging a drink of their coffee, and doing it all over again.

"Consumer relations," the blonde representative explained shortly. "They deal with customer complaints, questions, that sort of thing. They're the dregs of the company."

At the end of the hallway of cubicles they turned right down a quieter, narrower hall. These were lined on the left with private offices.

"You actually have your own office. It's not bigger than mine, just for future reference."

The blonde hustled through a door and clapped her hands, illuminating a small office with a wilting plotted plant, but a nice computer.

"Welcome to your hell. When you're not making money by being a mimic, you'll oversee a small division of the shipping and handling department dealing directly with the French branches. It was on your résumé that you minored in business, and that you worked for a while as a shipping clerk in Metropolis – for a lingerie company, right? So I'm sure this is nothing new. Hurry up and put your bag down and then go to that conference room three doors down the hall, on your right."

With a sharp clacking of her heels, one of Gotham's former high school pep-squad leaders swept from Louise's new office and hurried out of sight. Louise was finally able to let out a breath, set down her purse, and shut her eyes on the blinding light of her office.

She allowed herself thirty more seconds of silence before she gathered up the clipboard, a pen, some spare paper, and hurried to the conference room. It took her five minutes to find it after she located the bathroom the blonde had directed her to, and five more to banish the hot flush from her cheeks after the withering stares and verbal assault she received on keeping Monsieur Dubois waiting.

And the best was yet to come.

* * *

"Well, hey there," Louise plucked a name plate up from the desk in front of her and examined the name carved into the shiny gold lacquer. "Sara Burton. Wow, Sara. That's sure a cute, innocent little name. Not the sort of name you'd expect someone who would intentionally try to get you fired from your job twenty minutes in on your very first day, to have. Usually they're called Veronica or Victoria or, you know, something else starting with a 'V' and incorporating an 'ick' sound."

"I don't know what you're talking about." Sara Burton replied blithely, and then held up one finger as she answered a phone call. "Good afternoon, Dubois and Company, front desk. Uh-huh. Certainly. Absolutely, Mister White, I'll put you right through." She pressed a button with the tip of her manicured finger and then carefully set down the phone. "You know, going into a job with conspiracy theories isn't very healthy."

"Well, what can I say, I've got an overactive imagination."

Louise smiled wanly and then leaned forward. Her blouse was already rumpled beyond salvation, anyhow, so she figured it didn't matter much where she leaned, even if it happened to be over a tub of bubbling nuclear waste.

"Listen, I'm not here to one-up you, or steal your job-slash-man-slash-best friend-slash-whatever the hell else you hold dear, all right? I'm here because I need the money and it was a helluva lot better than freelancing part time as a translator for horny high school boys who wanted to hear me say 'Fuck me, big boy' in French. If this is going to turn into a giant pissing contest then I can just go ahead and fold right now and confess that yes, you're probably better than me on all accounts. Go you, you're spectacular. Woo-hoo, you win."

Louise straightened, contented with her little 'Please-For-The-Love-Of-God-Let-Me-Be' speech, and gathered up the bundle of papers she had to take home and look over that night, presumably after she'd showered, changed into something more comfortable, and drank half a bottle of Chianti. God, her head pounded.

"So, I'll see you tomorrow, Sara Burton, and I hope that next time you direct me someplace you'll try to make it a location that doesn't smell so overwhelmingly of piss."

Ten steps was all it took for Sara Burton to catch up with her, her tiny legs shuffling along at a speed rivaling, roughly, that of a hummingbird's wings.

"You didn't request a parking spot. I read that on your file."

With difficulty, Louise repressed a distinct eye-roll.

"That's because I don't have a car. I'm into the whole 'Go Green' movement, you know – cutting back on all that pesky, atmospheric-withering smog that the fine city of Gotham perfects so masterfully, by way of taking public transportation."

"Well," Sara scoffed contemptuously. "Don't you mean 'Go Blue'? Because that's the color you'll be when the Feds haul your body out of the river. I mean, maybe you don't know much about Gotham, but walking home alone after six isn't the best of ideas. _Anybody_ with a brain would know that. Especially one who claims to have lived here before. What were you, like, some privileged trust fund kid or something? Never went outside without Tito the Chauffeur chaperoning?"

_Tito?_

"Actually," Louise pushed her way through the revolving doors and out into the brisk night air. A couple cars drove by at speeds twenty over the speed limit, the drivers' faces all wearing a mask of apprehension and fear as they hurried to get home safely. The main part of the city hadn't been this bad ten years ago. Wasn't there any 'good part' of town, anymore? "I grew up in the Narrows."

Sara, stymied for the moment, puffed a stream of air through her nose and then flicked her hair over her shoulder. "Well. From rags to riches. What a touching story."

"What are you doing walking with me, Sara?" Louise shot a look towards the woman, who was a good four inches shorter than her. It wasn't even like Louise was a giant, either. With her highest heels on she topped out at five foot seven or eight.

Sara shrugged, hitching her bag onto her shoulder and then looking up at her. "Wanna get a drink? I mean, you know, for a warm welcome sort of thing? My treat, I guess."

Louise wasn't entirely sure if she wanted to spend an evening with somebody who was at worst blatantly rude and at best slyly passive aggressive, but then again . . . . free drinks.

She sighed heavily. "Uh . . . sure."

They stopped in at some smoke-filled barroom and Louise watched as tiny Sara Burton polished off an entire onion ring tower and a mug of frothy beer. She might have worked herself up to be mildly disgusted if it wasn't for the too-salty-but-just-strong-enough margarita she had perched in front of her, the width of which was at least the size of a small dinner plate. Gloriously so. They just didn't make 'em like that at the classy places.

"Ugh, I know one girl who's hitting the gym tomorrow morning. You know, you ought to look into that yourself. I notice that you've got an abundance of gracilis fat."

Louise didn't even want to know what 'gracilis fat' was, nor did she necessarily care. Things were so much easier when the mind was foggy with drink.

"So, Gotham blows, huh?"

Louise bit her lip. "Uh. . . . yeah. A little. It's . . . changed. I thought there was a lot of crime when _I_ lived here, but now . . .It's like you guys are living in some scorched, post-apocalyptic world or something."

"Oh, well that's totally easy to explain. Gotham sucks because of Batman."

"Batman the Hero, Batman?"

"More like Batman the Self-Righteous, Would-Be Savior, Batman. He totally fucked this city over. Like, I'm talking a complete ass-rape situation. Look where we are now: Some sub-par D.A. mucking things up, no doubt getting paid off by half the crime lords in this town; ninety percent of the criminals treating the city to their own personal Oktoberfest, complete with vulgar nudity, looting, and drunkenness; our main hospital burnt to the ground and sick people lolling around on street-corner clinics; and some completely freaky psycho going after Bruce Wayne. God, if _his_ face gets burned off, I swear I'll cry. He's so pretty."

She sighed wistfully and took another drink from her mug of beer.

"I thought that whole hospital situation, and the D.A. one, too, actually, was because of the Joker?"

Sara shivered, the light blond hairs on her arms rising at the mere mention of the name. Louise watched this reaction with abject interest. It was, she decided, rather amusing. She hadn't honestly thought that people would be spooked at the slightest hint of a name – that was so . . . so . . . so Lord Voldemort, or something. She wondered if people would start referring to him as Jester-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named.

"Oh, God, don't even _mention_ that freak's name. I swear the entire time he was out running free I sat curled up in my room eating a carton of Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream and rocking back and forth in a corner. I didn't even work out."

"_No."_

"Yeah, I mean, I figured why even? I thought every second that my entire house would just get blown into pieces. Might as well go out with a spoonful of saturated fat in your mouth, right?"

"It's certainly the most dignified way to go."

"Totally." Sara waved over a waiter and asked for another pint of beer and then swept her blond bangs out of her face. "I mean, I can't imagine what those poor people at Arkham Asylum have gone through, having to take care of him. But then I guess they get what they get for choosing to work at a loony bin. Personally, I'd let him starve."

The waiter hurried over with the requested pint, smacked it down, and then rushed off to break up a fight between two muscle-laden bikers.

"Not to say that the guy isn't a genius or whatever. I mean, he had Batman up a pole half the time. The entire city went absolutely bonkers. Shootings, suicides, widespread panic. It was nuts. I mean, I've never seen anything like it. All he had to do was make one phone call, one threat to blow up a hospital, and the next thing you know everybody and their great-grandmother was out on the streets sporting a Glock and busting caps at Coleman Reese. Everybody went bat-shit crazy, seriously, no pun intended or whatever. It was in-_sane_."

The information she knew about the Joker was vague, at best. She'd heard about the panic, of course, while she lived in Metropolis. It was something that the news reporters touched on delicately, with morose faces and their "tragedy" voices in full swing. The sort they used for bus crashes and missing children alerts. The thing was, Metropolis was so . . . _nice_. They had their problems, sure. A lot of weird stuff that got pretty nasty at times. But, they also had their own brand of completely bizarre, unexplainable solutions to those problems. At the end of the day things just _turned out_ all right. A bus full of children ready to careen off a cliff was found on the top of a hospital helicopter pad, with no explanation as to how the hell a Greyhound bus could crawl up the side of a building to get there in the first place.

And that was the thing. Everything worked out in the end. Metropolis was the swelling music at the end of the movie, the sappy, drenched-in-rain kiss between the hero and his lady love. It was the apple pie. The daylight.

Gotham was the night. The leftover mystery-meat lasagna that Mom and Pop left out on accident and which got chewed on a little by a rodent or two. It was the death of Jack at the end of _'Titanic'_, with Rose sobbing in the cold ocean on a wooden door, except in terms of Gotham, that was where the movie would end. With Rose floating all alone, desperate and freezing, until, if she was lucky, she got devoured by sharks. No happy endings. No unrequited-turned-requited love. Those things don't happen. Not in Gotham.

In Gotham, people didn't get to see their Jacks again. Louise knew that all too well.

"But just because he's a criminal mastermind doesn't mean he gets props for it. He's Gotham's Hitler. Except worse, you know, because at least Hitler focused on one demographic and if you weren't a Jew you figured, Hey, I'm safe, no need to hide in the attic."

"A thought that has crossed all our minds at least once."

"Exactly. But him . . . he doesn't care _who_ you are. Men, women, children . . . he'll kill them all, and he'll _laugh_ while he does it. Like . . . he's got no _plan_. No _reason_. He just _does_. Nobody really knows why, either. Some people think that there's some purpose, like . . . he wants to make some point to everyone, or something. But I just think he's crazy. Schizo or something."

The pitch of her voice had lowered an octave as she spoke, the quiet hush of her words whispering across the table to Louise like some secret drug deal. As if the Joker, wherever he was – in a padded cell, or stacking colored blocks on top of one another and then knocking them down, the closest thing to destroying city buildings as he could get while locked away – could hear them, and would make them pay for speaking his name.

"It wasn't just him though, was it?" It was hard to believe that one man could cause such widespread destruction with little to no outside help. Surely he was part of a larger organization. One terrorist could knock down a building but it was only the entire cult which could cause real damage. Or maybe that's just what she wanted to believe. The idea of one, single man being the cause of such panic, such madness . . . . It was terrifying. "He had to have help."

"Oh sure, sure. That's another crazy thing. He got all these people to do whatever he wanted by, like, doing some Jedi mind trick on them. Well, not really. But he totally went all Charles Manson and created this huge following of psychopathic lunatics fresh out of Arkham to help him. And they thought he was just like, the second coming or whatever, so of course those crazies let him slit their guts open and stick bomb-activating cell phones in their stomachs."

"A bomb-activating . . ."

"Oh yeah. Commissioner Gordon caught the psycho and took him down to the MCU. They thought they were real clever and everything. Turns out the Joker _planned _it all ahead of time. He had Harvey Dent and his girlfriend strapped to gasoline and blown up that night, and while Batman and everyone was rushing to try to save them, one of his thugs who got himself locked up at his orders, collapsed. When the Joker got his one phone call he called the phone inside of that guy and blew half the precinct up, and escaped. It was total hush-hush but, you know how it goes, one guy talks and then the whole world knows."

"Jesus . . ." Louise murmured, swiping at a stray curl that had fallen into her line of vision. Despite the fact that just mere moments ago she had found Sara Burton gutless and melodramatic for spooking at the name of the Joker, she had to admit that she had chills running up and down her spine.

She had heard of the brutal murder of Rachel Dawes and Harvey Dent, the famed and benevolent district attorney that had been Gotham's one hope for a better future, and who had ended up with half of his generous, manly face burned all to hell. It was a tragedy. People in the streets who had heard him speak cried for him. And it was all because of one man, one man who had played Gotham, spun it like a top.

It was like one huge preordained incident, something that was unstoppable. Like the Joker wasn't even a man, but a force of nature, a symbol of the very chaos he wanted so badly to create.

"And those _scars_. Talk about creepy. If we really knew where he got 'em, maybe they wouldn't be so scary. But the fact that he tells a different story every time . . ."

"Scars?"

"Yeah, on his cheeks. You know, one of those, whaddyou call 'em – Chelsea grins. And whoever stitched him up sure as hell didn't take Home Ec. in high school. It looks like they tried to thread a bicycle chain through them. Or, as far as I saw on tape, what with all that pasty makeup smeared on his face." Sara leaned forward and lowered her voice once again. "I've heard that just before he kills you, he asks if you want to know how he got them. He makes up this wild story, and then . . ." She dragged her finger across her neck .

Louise chewed at her lips. She'd heard of scars like that. Things that mob and gang members inflicted on their victims. Slit the corners of their mouths and then kicked them until they screamed and ripped their own faces open. She wondered if the Joker had been at the receiving end of one such heinous crime. It was hard to imagine somebody who was spoken of with such dread lying at the mercy of others, bleeding, screaming, begging, maybe even crying. Again she thought of the man she'd lost to the mob, how he had gone. The things she knew were splotchy and disconnected in terms of coherency, distorted by her own morbid imagination. She couldn't even remember what was real and what wasn't, anymore.

In her mind, whenever she thought of the Joker receiving those scars, she always pictured _him._

* * *

The dreams came back that night. It was the presence of soft flesh that had driven them away on her first night back in Gotham, she was sure. The relaxed state of her body, if not of her mind. Another reason why she had taken to slipping between the sheets of mystery men – they drove the terror away.

The dreams are always the same, when they come. They're light, at first. A soft summer morning with no place to go. The sort where you stretch out longways, like a cat, and just bathe in the sunlight. Just soak up the melatonin with savage ecstasy.

The bed on his side is always empty. The sheets are rumpled, the mattress still warm, his scent still lingering in the air. He's only just gotten out, and so, of course, she goes to look for him.

In the back of her mind she tells herself not to go. To stay in her room and forget it all. To go back to sleep. But her skin cries out for his contact. Her conscious mind tries to warn her every time, but that sleeping part, the one that is supposed to recreate those subjects that we try our best to suppress during the daytime, blatantly ignores her. Night is the only time that that part of her brain gets a free reign, and it takes its chance. It goes looking for him. She goes looking for him. Every time, she goes looking for him.

Every time she has a crazy hope that she might find him. Whole. Strong. She walks through the streets of the Narrows, empty, with pieces of trash blowing like tumbleweeds across her path. It does not slow her down. She knows where she's going. The docks. It's always, always the docks.

As she walks the sky begins to darken. Her footsteps quicken. It seems imperative that she find him soon, because a storm's coming, and if he's in the water . . . . A droplet falls from the rolling, rumbling clouds above her, and she begins to run. Sometimes she runs through buildings, straight through the walls, like she's a ghost and matter means nothing to her. At others she can never find the street, and she gets lost in a maze as the sky darkens and the rain comes down on her skin. It's torrential, a downpour. The streets flood with it. Water rushes through the gutters and into the storm drains. She can hear the splashing of it down in the sewer.

And then she's there. At the docks. Sometimes it's not clear how she got there and she's confused. Other times she's relieved. Most of the time she's just terrified. Standing on the narrow boardwalk and staring out at the grey, roiling waters as her hair whips around her face fills her with a sort of choking dread. In the back of her mind her conscious voice whispers, _Please, no, not again, I don't want to see it again. Go back, go back . . . _

But she can't, she's too far in, now. She spots a form, a body far out, and she knows it's him, and he's drowning. He's drowning and he's hurt and she has to save him. He'd done everything, everything for her. He was everything. She has to save him. There is no question. No reason. No thinking about the fact that she was never a very good swimmer.

She dives in. The water is cold and it presses on her, strangles her on first contact. Her eyes sting, like it's made of poison. She hates it. She hates it so much she wishes she'd die as soon as she can taste the water in her mouth, feel it burning her nose. But she doesn't die. She starts to swim.

It's all pushing and struggling, battling against a current that is so against her. The form of his body is distant and grey, but she can see it outlined in the murky depths. She needs to get to him, but God, her air, her air is running out, and she can't remember where the surface is anymore. Up, down, sideways, backwards, where is she swimming? She can't remember, she's lost, the shape of him is suddenly gone, disappeared, and she's frantic. She's lost him, again. She's lost him. He's gone forever. Why didn't she ever learn how to swim?

She closes her eyes in distress, and she wishes she could cry, but she thinks it's impossible in the water. Or maybe she is crying, and she just can't tell, because she's surrounded by an ocean of tears, salty and bitter.

_Don't, don't, please, just die, just drown right now. I don't want to see it, don't open your eyes . . . _

But she does, every time. And she sees him. It's no different, not this time, not the time before. Every time she opens her mouth in the water to scream, and only ends up choking on the liquid surrounding her, suspending her. But it's not water, anymore, it's blood, it's blood and she's drowning in it. It's _his_ blood, leaking from the rotting corpse of him that floats in front of her, suspended. His body, his beautiful body, is just torn to bits, all slashes and moldering flesh. His clothes are ripped off in places, leaving him almost naked, and where his skin is visible she can see it peeling back, revealing browning bone, and across his abdomen, spilling intestines. His eyes are empty. Not just of feeling, of expression, but completely. Just sockets, crawling with barnacles and sea parasites that eat up the decomposing bits.

She's choking. On everything. On her grief, on her repulsion, on the blood or the water or the rain or the air, she doesn't know.

And when she wakes she propels herself off of her bed, straight onto the floor, where she lies gasping for breath she cannot catch. And she sobs.

It's the same every time. It's the only fresh memory of him her mind lets her keep.

* * *

With a weary exhale, Louise exited out of her e-mail account, closing the lid of her laptop and leaning back in her swivel chair. Of course she could count on Mollie to be so unchangingly ribald, suggesting, in response to Louise's worries about whether or not she'd made the right choice in coming back to Gotham, that she join her in Tennessee where she was teaching as a professor at a state university, perhaps opening their own brothel on the side to get extra cash for shoes and booze. (A joke, she hoped.) Still, it was refreshing to speak to her at all.

It'd been over a month since she'd arrived in Gotham, and it seemed like things got blacker every day. Her job was, just as she told Mollie via electronic communication, mindless. Part sales and part translator – the two things that Louise did nearly without thinking. Hadn't she spoken solely in the language for over a year? It was almost too easy. True, Monsieur Dubois was a hard man to please, as she realized when she translated either too slowly or too quickly, or with too much of an American accent to her French phrases, but he couldn't be displeased with her knowledge of the language itself because of course she knew it was nearly flawless. And as to the other aspect of her daily duties, that heckling little busywork that her superiors threw at her to banish their uneasiness about giving her such a generous sum of money every month, was entirely trivial. Handling shipping and handling wasn't exceedingly difficult, even to a girl who'd never exactly found math conducive to everyday life.

Socially she was more or less at the same place she'd always been – stuck somewhere between being noticed and unnoticed; liked and disliked. Neutral. It had been that way even before _he_ had died, back at St. Katherine's. Not that this bothered her. What had attracted her to the Napiers wasn't just Fate, but a sort of understanding that they were, at heart, of the same mold as herself. They enjoyed each other's company quietly, serenely, and that was all they had needed. As soon as she'd metLola, met _him_. . . . it was like meeting anybody else hardly mattered, anymore, because she'd found at once an indefatigable and fiercely loyal best friend, and a boy who was both her lover, her protector, and her worshiper. Had she needed more?

Had she needed to indulge in mindless chatter about dresses or the cost of Daddy's new Lamborghini? Could she, when Lola was dying? She hadn't thought so, hadn't cared to try, and honestly the closest she'd come to something more than a mere acquaintance at St. Katherine's was Sydney White, who, because of her Southern and somewhat rugged roots – New Money, with all the down-to-earthness of the middle class still in tact – didn't mind that Louise's mother was a whore, or that she lived in the Narrows, or that the boy she fucked was a drug dealer. The rest of them . . . Well, anyway, they didn't matter. Not anymore, and not even then. Not really.

After the death of the only family she'd loved, even including that of her own, things had changed. The loneliness was horrible. She knew if she didn't interact, if she didn't have something to drive away the thoughts, the dreams, that she would probably end up climbing onto the roof of her apartment building and hurtling off into the night. He'd always said he wanted to die in a rush of air and elation. She had wondered, at times, if in those last seconds before she hit the ground she would feel him with her. It was enough to make her climb up onto the ledge and balance there, looking down, swaying, like a drugged-up and beaten Jenny in the middle of _Forrest Gump_.

Of course those were dark days, passing thoughts, and the socializing bit chased them away just enough to help her heal adequately to finally go to France and seal up her wounds even further. Mollie had been the first true best friend she'd had since sweet, sick Lola, and with her in Tennessee she was once again nearly friendless. Women at work spoke to her cordially, but behind her back they whispered about what an ice bitch she was, how strangely reclusive; Sydney called upon her about once a week to have cocktails on her veranda in the Palisades, but Louise was disappointed to discover that most of the green-grass moxie of the former Kentuckian had been stamped away by second generation privilege. And Sydney herself found Louise not quite the same as she had been back at St. Katherine's.

Louise wasn't surprised by this. She knew herself to be nothing like the girl of her childhood. The girl _he_ had loved. That girl was gone, as dead as he was.

She and Sara Burton went out to that same seedy bar every couple of nights and the petite blonde gossiped about everything, critiqued often, and ate everything in sight. Louise found her entertaining in a frenetic sort of way, like watching a cat on catnip, though the discovery she'd made – that those long trips to the bathroom at the end of the night weren't just for Sara to powder her nose, but empty her stomach of everything she'd put into it via laxatives she kept tucked in her purse – put a considerable damper on the whole 'using-half-wit-blonde-to-feel-superior-about-one's-self' thing she had going on.

Which was why she was inside on a Friday night in her pajamas, alone, watching the news and eating chocolate (hoping the hormones that it supposedly released into her brain would substitute sex for her enough to keep her out from underneath of some random, curly-haired blond stranger, at least for that night).

Somewhere way across town Bruce Wayne was lounging in his newly restored mansion, throwing some charity ball for the restoration of Gotham General, and no doubt Sydney Carroway and Mr. Foot-In-The-Stock-Market would be there, laughing breezily and sipping on _Close des Goisses_ or _Cuvée Fut de Chene_, four hundred a bottle. It wasn't like she wanted to attend, but the thought of all those privileged, mindless drones gathered into one room, drinking to the health of their city but caring for nothing but the _h'orderves _and the bubbly, made her almost sick with rage. As if they gave a rat's ass about the sick and dying. Why did they need to? They were the_ crème de la crème_. They didn't need to care for anything.

Still, that knowledge paired with the gruesome headlines on her local news station and the realization that she was alone and unguarded (she really ought to get a dog), had her distinctly disgruntled and paranoid. In the interim between her fourth and fifth piece of chocolate she turned off the news and flipped through the channels, looking for a show that didn't make her want to weep and/or hide underneath of her bed in fear. She landed on, almost by accident, '_I Love Lucy'_.

It was probably a sign of extreme psychological misfunction that the mere sight of the show usually made her eyes well up. T.V.'s first real sitcom about a zany New York housewife technically shouldn't reduce her to a blubbering mess. Except, of course, that she remembered the last time that show had played in her apartment, and it was that memory which the show tugged out from the dark, dusty annexes of Louise's mind.

This time she didn't start crying. She couldn't seem to pick up her remote and click the channel button. Her eyes were riveted on Lucy, Ricky, Ethel and Fred. Lucy and Ethel dressing up as Martians and terrifying the city, _a la _Orson Welles. The black and white cinematography simple, all neat lines and basic camera angles. She and Lola had loved the show. It'd been the one of the only ones that had been broadcasted throughout the Narrows, on one of the three fuzzy channels that were available to those who weren't able to pay for cable. It'd been playing two days after she'd sat at Lola's side and watched her eyes close for the last time.

It had been playing the day Peyton Riley had come to her door.

She remembered every minute of the day her life had changed forever. It was branded onto the inside of her skull, seared there like a tattoo that even Angelina Jolie's specialist couldn't remove.

It had been a dull day. Something mundane and ordinary. Or maybe she just remembered it feeling like that because of how surreal everything felt, so strangely untouchable and distant. Like she was alone, drifting, stuck somewhere in a time-space continuum distortion, or something. The lingering effects of death do that to you; make you feel like you're drifting. Like you're hardly alive yourself. Or maybe it's that you feel so _incredibly_ alive, and that somehow feels so wrong to you. She didn't really know.

She knew that two days before that day, Lola had died. She'd sat next to her and pressed her lips to Lola's burning skin and whispered to her about heaven and how peaceful and painless it would all be. She remembered that Lola, in a faltering, hardly-there voice, had asked her where her brother was, why Jack wasn't back yet. And she remembered that she hadn't been able to give her an answer.

"_I'll be right back."_

Those were the last words he ever said to her.

"_I have to go out and get that money. I'll be right back."_

They'd seemed so meaningless at the time. She'd told him to be back soon, not to take too long. Having him out of her sight had become increasingly hard, made more so by the fact that he'd come home with a bullet shot through his arm. She hadn't expected . . . . When he didn't come back that first night she'd worried. She'd paced up and down in their apartment. But she'd figured that things were just taking a little longer than usual. That he would come stumbling in, baggy-eyed and irritable, sometime the next afternoon. Snap at her and fall into bed with his clothes and shoes still on and then, later in the night, when he woke as she slid his tennis shoes off and climbed in to bed next to him, curl up next to her, press his hot lips to her neck, and murmur indistinguishable endearments that she could never quite catch but cherished dearly. As always.

That night had been the first night she'd slept alone, without him, and if she'd known it would be the first of an endless number to come she might have resented it a little more. As it was, she had curled up to his side of the bed and inhaled the scent of him and wondered where in that terrifying city of theirs he was that night.

The next day she had spent tending to Lola. And the next. And the next. He hadn't returned yet; there had been no word from him, no sign. His side of the bed had been left just as it had been the last time he'd rolled his lanky body out of it – rumpled, the sheets tangled at the end in a messy pile. She hadn't bothered to fix it up.

She wasn't sure even now what went through her head during that first week. She had occupied herself with Lola so extensively that it was hard to focus on where he was; why he hadn't come home yet. A million thoughts had flashed through her mind. She remembered somewhat grimly that she had worried that he had taken the money and run from whatever he had been so adamant to run from the night he'd come home shot. She had told him, then, that he could leave if he wanted to. Part of her had been sure he had, when she had reached the fourth night and once again slept alone. Another part of her had been sure they were just going through another phase, much like the one where he disappeared for nine days and reappeared apologetic. Because sometimes he just couldn't deal, and that was how he handled it.

Somehow she'd never thought of him being hurt. It was something that was too horrific for her to entertain. Not when Lola had been so sick, fading away, dying for real this time.

The last two days of Lola's life had been punctuated in turns by sobbing, furious praying, and boundless rage at Jack, because he still wasn't home. She had sat at Lola's side and stroked her bald head and when, on the day before she died, Lola asked if he was okay, if something had happened to him, Louise had whispered No, no he's fine, he's just very busy. He's buying us a house in a different city and we're going to go start a new life, and if we ever have a daughter we'll name her Lola, after you. Lies, lies, lies. Inwardly she had been so angry at him that if he'd crawled through the door on hands and knees begging for her forgiveness, she would have kicked him in his gut.

And then Lola had died. With a last shaky breath and a final, pleading message that Louise still remembered verbatim, she had faded from life. And he still hadn't come home. She'd cried all that day, mindlessly rifling through funeral preparations, things she'd wished that she would never have to use and was still almost shocked that she finally had to. She had told herself that she was the one being the bigger person between the two of them. She had stayed on with Lola until the very end, just as she'd said. She had been determined to bury her underneath of that tree, just as Lola had requested, and she would. And a shameful part of her had whispered that once that was all over, once the hard part was through, he would come back and take her away just like she'd always thought he would.

But the next day had arrived in a rush of unsettling sorrow, and Lola's body had been removed to the funeral home, where the standard death preparations would be undergone. Louise had spent the early morning packing up her things, sobbing and smiling and wishing more than anything that she had him beside her to get through this with her, to let her know she wasn't alone. She had been angry that morning, because he _should_ have been there. Should have stayed and held his sister's hand and kissed her cheek before she passed away and then sat next to her and laughed with her over all the good times, and cried over all the things they would miss. That was how it _should_ have been.

When somebody had knocked on the door at two o'clock she had been sure it was him. That for whatever reason he'd lost his key and he was coming back, groveling. As she had hurried to the door she'd even had mock conversations rolling through her head. What would he say, and what would her response be? Anger, tears, the guilt-trip or the silent treatment? When she'd composed herself and swung open the door to find an immaculately dressed blonde woman in a scandalously cut red dress and a floppy white hat dipped low over her right eye, a large black bag in hand, she hadn't known what to think. She'd been in her pajamas, her face tear streaked and blotchy; her hair greasy – she hadn't bothered showering for days, with Lola so sick and her grief so monumental.

The woman's eyes had flickered over her and Louise thought she could remember a shadow of judgement in her visible blue eye.

"Who are you?" she'd asked. She figured that maybe this woman had something to do with the funeral arrangements. The thought had even passed through her mind that perhaps this was her long lost sister, a daughter of her father, come to invite her warmly back into a family who was present, who cared. She hadn't recognized the woman for who she really was. The truth was stranger than fiction, even then.

"I'm here about Jay," the blonde had said in a low, sultry tone. Not intentionally sexy; more like that was how her voice was on a regular basis. Louise could remember a flicker of great annoyance and fear passing through her, shaking her whole trembling frame, as she wondered if this woman was somebody he'd been fooling around with behind her back.

"What? You mean Jack?"

A small smile had touched the edges of her red lips, and she repeated the name softly, almost reverently, and again Louise had felt that flash of irrational terror, that this woman was coming to her door to tell her that she'd taken him away forever.

"Yes. I'm here about . . . . Jack." The woman had blinked down at her with her one large blue eye. In expectation for something, it had seemed. It wasn't until she cleared her throat and said, "Can I come in?" that Louise had blinked and reluctantly moved away from the doorframe.

She'd closed the door behind the blonde as she walked in, and she hadn't appreciated the way the other woman had plopped her bag down like she owned the place, scanned everything, like she was soaking it all up, as if that tiny, grungy apartment had been some great treasure for her to find, to enter. Like the _'I Love Lucy'_ reruns on the broken down television set were something holy.

"So, um . . . What exactly are you here for?" Louise had asked bluntly, a little rudely. If the woman noticed she hadn't commented on it. She'd bent down to pick up a shirt that was folded over the arm of the couch, there from before he'd walked out of that door for the last time, waiting to be sewn. The mysterious woman had run it through her fingers and then opened her mouth a few times as if to speak, but not knowing quite how to say the words.

"You know I never knew his real name," she'd said finally, and looked over at Louise. Louise hadn't known what to reply, so she waited for the blonde to continue, all the while petrified that her next words would be "I've slept with the boy you love".

"We always just called him Jay. His first initial, you know. He didn't like anybody knowing much about him. He kept his work and home separate. You and his sister. Where is she?" The woman had looked around again, as if she'd missed the young girl on her first examination of the room.

"She . . . died, just about two days ago," Louise had replied, and for a second the blonde looked genuinely sad.

"Oh . . . . _Oh_."

Louise had licked her lips and tried to smooth her hair down. She'd felt like a complete slob, standing in front of this woman with her perfect features and her perfect body and her breasts which looked like actual breasts instead of inflamed mosquito bites.

"You said . . . Did you work with him? Because if you're looking for your dealer, I don't know where he is. He hasn't been back for a week now. And I had nothing to do with his business."

"I know," the blonde had said, almost sympathetically. "I know you didn't, because you don't even know who I am, do you? You don't even know what he was really doing all this time."

Again her breath had felt stale and heavy inside of her breast. The woman had turned to face her head on and Louise had examined her face, trying to see underneath of the wide-brimmed hat and get a better look at the right side of her face, which was shrouded in shadow. It'd only taken a second, searching glance for her to cover her mouth with her hand and gasp in realization.

"You're Peyton Riley." And the answer had come like a flash of nausea, and all at once she'd _known_. He hadn't been a drug dealer, not just a drug dealer. He'd been a mobster.

_I've done horrible things. I did a horrible thing tonight . . . . _

She'd felt sick, humiliated, tricked. He'd played her. _Played_ her. Lied to her and put himself in danger night after night and God, had he killed people? Had he been involved in those heinous crimes that had killed so many innocent, downtrodden people? And that gunshot wound, which she had assumed had been a by product of some drug deal gone wrong . . . what had that _really_ been from?

"That note. You left him a note and he disappeared for nine days and . . . he was with _you_," she'd whispered, appalled at herself, at him, at the woman in front of her. The elusive Riley, first name, with something run-of-the-mill like Smith or Jones as her last, had always haunted her, toyed with the jealous emotions at the back of her mind. Never had she assumed that the woman who'd called Jack, her Jack, 'baby', would be _Peyton_ Riley, beautiful mob princess and wife of the most dangerous man in the Narrows, perhaps even in Gotham.

"Oh, God. Oh, God, were you _sleeping_ with him?"

Riley had laughed, an almost rueful sound. "No. Oh, no. He was . . . . completely devoted to you. Every step of the way."

This had done little to quell the nervous bubbling of tension in her stomach, rising up her throat. Peyton Riley had picked at a spot on her thumbnail before continuing on.

"I met him at the butcher's shop. I . . . Everyone knows I despise my husband. I had a plan to take Johnny out of the picture. To get me out of the situation I was in, getting knocked around and raped by some disgusting Italian who I could barely stand to look at. Jay . . . . Jack . . . he looked like someone who I could use. So I offered to pay him to help me. He really needed money. I didn't learn until later for what." Peyton had shrugged helplessly and then fanned her blonde hair out so that it covered more of the right side of her face.

"So he joined Johnny's ranks, and he . . . . was influential. He had that persuasion. Wiggled his way into a bunch of heads, you know. Started making them think that maybe Johnny wasn't the best choice as a leader, after all."

Louise remembered listening, spellbound, as this woman who she'd only seen from afar and had held in great contempt and respect, almost, told her things about the boy she'd thought she'd known better than anybody. Things that had made her mouth fall open in shock, mingled disgust and admiration for the lengths he'd gone to for them, for Lola. She'd thought she'd known, thought she'd understood, but . . . .

"Did he ever mention Angelo Sabatino to you?"

Angelo. The forgetful friend he hadn't understood why he liked so much. Louise had been almost relieved to be able to nod, somewhat stunned at the infamous surname connected to a person she'd figured was just another normal inhabitant of the Narrows. Of course it was an Italian name. Of course he'd been a mobster, too. Of course.

"Angelo was in love with me. We started having an affair, worked together to bring Johnny down. It was almost done. Jay hardly had anything left to do. And then . . . then me, Daddy, and Ang got into a car and . . . the driver was one of Johnny's men. He killed Daddy, and before I knew what happened me and Ang . . . ." She'd bowed her head, her voice cracking on the man's name. "They called Jay in. Johnny had Ang at gunpoint, had Jay at gunpoint. I don't know what happened, but . . . there were two shots, and Angelo was dead, and Jay was shot, and he ran."

She'd felt dizzy, had to sit down on her couch and cradle her head in her hands as she thought about the night he'd come home bloody and gasping. But he'd been fine, he hadn't been dying, and he'd recovered so quickly . . . . She hadn't thought to ask him what had made him fall to his knees. In a way she hadn't even wanted to know. And Johnny Sabatino had held a gun up to him, and that was why he'd had to run, she understood now. Peyton Riley had been explaining to her why Jack had had to leave, probably at his request.

"He tried to kill me. He almost managed it," she'd said, and Louise had looked up at her, examined her flawless skin and wondered how she could say "almost managed" when she was so obviously undamaged. "But I lived. I wasn't supposed to. He'd planned for everything to think Jay had killed Angelo, but I lived and . . . . Jay knew everything, and I could back up his story. The Sabatinos loved Ang. They'd slaughter Johnny."

Peyton Riley had sighed shakily, and then reached up and grabbed her wide-brimmed white hat, removing it from her head. When she'd shaken the hair back from her face Louise had nearly felt like fainting. Her right eye had been made of glass, unmoving and staring fixedly at a point in the distant. The skin around it had been red and leathery, puckered, and there was an unevenness in her cheekbones that offset her beautiful face. There'd been scars crisscrossing across her smooth skin, stitches still threaded through the lacerations, disfiguring her.

"Slammed me into a glass table a few times. Gouged my eye out . . ." she'd murmured, reaching up one conscientious and shaking hand to touch her face gingerly. "I wanted you to see it because . . . because I'm so sorry that I have to tell you what I'm about to tell you. I wanted you to know that I've suffered, too."

By then she'd been worked up into a near frenzy, halfway between screaming, crying, laughing, and fainting. Something had been wrong, horrendously wrong – Peyton Riley and her monstrous scars and her soft words, defying every sort of rumor she'd ever heard of the woman's personality.

"What are you talking about? I don't know anything about your job, or . . . what you've been doing with Jack. If you have bad news you'll have to wait until he comes back, because . . . ."

But Riley had cut her off gently but firmly, her full mouth turned down at the edges and her voice thick. "Your boy isn't coming home. He's not coming back. He can't."

She remembered the feeling even now, and thinking back on it she can still feel the exact horror she'd felt at hearing those words, sensing the undertone, feeling the frenzy building up inside of her until she'd felt like she'd go insane from grief.

"What . . . What . . ."

"Johnny and his boys caught him as he was coming to you with his money, the stuff I promised him."

Louise had stood, then sat back down, her breath coming in sharp, high gasps, her fingers pressed to her lips as she'd thought about the days he'd been gone, the days he hadn't come home and she'd assumed that he'd just run, that was all . . . .

"Johnny killed him."

As soon as the words had passed the blonde's lips Louise had gone strangely numb, an out of body experience. She'd watched herself, pale and disheveled and shaking violently, take in Riley's words with blank eyes and trembling lips.

"He told me about it the last time we crossed paths, lorded it over me. To let me know I'm all alone, and that he'll get me, too." Riley had swallowed and then continued. "I . . . . don't know if you want to know how they did it. All I know is that you won't find a body. Johnny told me that he had someone go back and throw him off the wharf, into the water."

Louise had started rocking, wrapping her arms around herself and scratching at her skin in an effort to claw the knowledge away. She remembered the feeling of the hysteria rising up in her, the way it felt so much more tangible than her grief for Lola, who had been so ready to die. And still so unreal, at the same time, because though this woman told her Jack was gone, her Jack who had told her he'd be right back the last time she saw him and kissed her goodbye, she couldn't really accept it.

Peyton Riley's voice had gotten softer, more fluid and empathetic. "He loved you. He wouldn't even look at me. I made passes at him, and he denied me every time. You should know that. I thought you should know . . . . Because he loved you, and to leave you thinking that he'd run off would be an insult to him. And now you know, and you can make arrangements. I'm sorry I had to tell you this after the little girl died."

Louise had shaken her head in denial, rubbed at her face to chase away the stinging tears that were gathering at the edges of her eyes. "No. No. You don't know, you can't . . . .!"

"I do know. I've felt this before. His name was Matt Atkins, and he's the only man I've ever loved. You should know that I do understand. I don't know you, but I know . . . . I'm sorry that what I'm telling you right now is true. But it is."

Louise had covered her whole face with her arms and gasped, hyperventilated, screamed into her palms and repeated the words "No, no, you're lying, you're wrong, it's not true" over and over again. She'd said it, but she hadn't believed it, because even then she realized that he'd told her he'd be right back and he'd never come home.

Even in her denial she'd had to admit that Jack would never have left his sister so close to death, with no family beside her. Nothing short of the grisly death Peyton Riley had told her had been afforded to him would have kept him away.

"I brought you your money, the money that was supposed to be his. There's more there than I promised him . . . . A hundred thousand," Peyton Riley had said at a break in the hysteria. Louise had been gulping for air, her eyes red-rimmed and irritated, hovering just on the edge of an absolute breakdown. She'd heard Riley's words and they struck her deeply, gotten her angry, because she'd hated the sight of that woman who'd gotten Jack into the mob in first place, introduced him to the man that would kill him. Who had been speaking so calmly, standing without a tremble to her limbs; without a quaver in her voice.

"You think that _money_ will make this better?" she'd demanded raspily, her voice broken and weary, like herself. "That a hundred thousand dollars of your tainted cash will make up for the fact that the guy I love is _dead_?"

The word burned her, scorched her throat dry. She'd coughed, she remembered. A horrible sound, like an invalid. But all that crying she'd done had caught up with her, and her even her own body was growing weary of the tears.

Peyton Riley hadn't seemed shocked or offended by the venom in her voice. She'd merely shook her head and replied, "No. What it will do is help you pay for two funerals, and get yourself a nice place in a better part of the city, and pay for some good education. Like Jay would have wanted for you."

She'd swiped at her blurry eyes. _I'll be right back_.

"And you think I can just forget about this, about him? Forget that your fucking husband _killed _him?"

And Louise remembered vividly the poisonous smile that stretched over the still-beautiful lips of Peyton Riley. The words that'd come from her mouth were so much more indicative of the woman she'd imagined her to be that it had frozen her in the midst of her grieving. It was the only taste she'd ever had of the ability Peyton Riley had to entrance.

"Oh. . . . You don't have to worry about Johnny. _Believe me_ when I tell you that he's going to get _exactly_ what he deserves."

She hadn't said another word. With a final nod of her head she'd repositioned the oversized hat and adjusted her hair to mask her disfigurements, and then strode from the apartment with barely a backwards glance, leaving the large bag of crisp hundred dollar bills behind.

One week later she'd read in the papers that Johnny Sabatino and his wife had plunged to their deaths at the Gotham waterfront while in the midst of a vicious domestic fight. Louise had looked at the obituary of Peyton Riley's blooming, healthy face, and felt a savage sense of justice. It was the first and last flash of gratefulness she'd ever had for the woman.

Now, looking back, _'I Love Lucy'_ still playing grainily in the background, Louise played out the rest of that horrible first night in her head. The emptiness of the apartment. The way she'd stumbled into the room, the bed they'd shared – the bed where they'd first slept together, where she'd felt him curl up into a ball against her, his long limbs flung out over her body as if grasping for her even in sleep – and pulled the sheets she'd left tangled at the foot of the bed up to her face, just to smell him again. She'd never thought it would be the last time he ever left her side. She'd never entertained the possibility that the last night they'd slept together would be the last night she'd ever feel his solid and reassuring weight pressed against her, his breath steady, fluttering and warm against her back.

She'd fallen asleep with the last viable fabric to have brushed his bare skin tucked under her head as a pillow.

That was the first night the dreams came.

Because Peyton Riley had told her that they'd thrown his body into the water, and it was there she always found him.

* * *

It is bright here. So bright that it blinds, illuminates even the darkest recesses. Light so pure cannot be found on any surface of earth; it is not heavy, nor painful. Dust floats like diamonds amongst the strands of gold. The sunlight is like individual strings up close. She feels as if she can reach up and pluck them; create music more beautiful and heavenly than any she has ever heard. But she does not reach out and try.

As always there is no noise, though it falls short of pressing silence. It is comfortable, serene. There is only the steady, rhythmic thumping of her heart. It's about time to get out of bed and go look for him.

The lighting is off when she walks through the front room. Brighter. It should be getting grey by now. The shine should be wearing off. But it does not. In the living area the windows are flung open wide and sunny rays stream in, illuminating the couch, where someone sits, turned away, strands of golden hair glistening.

"What are you doing here?"

Louise thinks she recognizes the voice, but it's at the same time hard to place, like a familiar sound bite that's been stripped of any background noise, improving the clarity but reducing the relatable feel of it.

"I'm looking for somebody."

"It's too late. Go back. You know it's too late."

"I can't. I have to save him. He's going to . . . ." What is that word, that word she's looking for? Something, something . . . It's horrible whatever it is, and she has to stop it.

"Drown. But he's not. You've got it all wrong . . ."

"Drown . . ." Rotting corpse and suffocating and drowning, yes, that's it. How did she know? That faceless blonde stranger? "Yes, that's right. God . . . God, I have to go, you're wasting my time, I have to –"

"You can't. You can't save him, Louise. He's gone. Jack's gone."

The slight figure turns to face her and at that moment sunlight blots out the entirety of the room, and she wakes up to the mid-afternoon glare.

The dreams have always been the same. Until now.


	23. Chapter 23

**A/N:** So, I guess some of last chapter _could_ have been tacked onto this one, making it less obnoxious and far easier to read and enjoy – which, because it had the lowest number of reviews of any chapter, I assume most of you did not. That's okay though, it was necessary to get it over with and make way for this one.

In response to a review I got last chapter, put to me by **Virgil Hilts**, who asked which actress I pictured when I picture Louise in my mind, I have this to say:

Finding a Louise was kind of a problem. I always pictured her as very pretty, but not in a conventional way, like, when authors post pictures of their character and they turn out to be a very scantily clad Megan Fox leaning over a motorcycle in nothing but some booty shorts and her sex-face in full swing.

Louise, in my mind (NOT Jack's, who, seeing as I wrote him from the POV of a boy very much in love, had a lot of extreme ideas on her unrivaled beauty), has dark hair, blue eyes, pale skin (how much tanning do you think a girl from the Narrows could do?), a thin frame, not much chest or hips, a pretty face, and most importantly, anybody who represents her needs _character_. Vacuous non-expressions you find in models aren't enough. She's been through shit, I want her representation to, well, represent that.

Thus, I give you these two photos, both of the lovely Marion Cotillard:

http: / / www . emoger . com / wp - content / uploads / 2010 / 07 / Marion - Cotillard - Feet - 173320 . jpg

(Yes, I know I over-space), and:

http: / / l . yimg . com / eb / ymv / us / img / hv / photo / movie _ pix / paramount _ classics / love _ me _ if _ you _ dare / marion _ cotillard / library . jpg

I like the first one because it's minimalist, in a way – a baggy sweatshirt against a cracked wall. So Gotham. These, BTW, are how I picture Louise as an adult. Not a blooming teenager. **So** tell me in a review how she stacked up to your own visions, and what you think of this chapter.

* * *

_"They say that "Time assuages" -  
Time never did assuage -  
An actual suffering strengthens  
As Sinews do, with age -_

Time is a Test of Trouble -  
But not a Remedy -  
If such it prove, it prove too There was no Malady"

_~Emily Dickinson_

* * *

She was smoke.

Illusive and faltering. Made of opaque tendrils, snaking through the air. Beneath those clothes she dressed in, blue silk and inviting cotton, there was a smoldering wreck of a dream she'd had. A candle coughing ash, pooling flakes of burning wick around the wreckage of her vision. An ideal that had once defined her. A good person. She'd been a good person.

She'd held onto it for as long as she could, truly she had.

But being good was so very hard when you had to do it all alone.

* * *

The dreams are different, now. This isn't to say that Jack's dead body never makes its horrific appearance known, and often. It does.

But whereas before she was all alone, standing on the edge of the docks or drowning in water, helpless and frightened, the boy she loved a hollow shell, unable to comfort her, she now finds that there is always an entirely unrelated person somewhere near. This curly-haired blonde stranger, who meets her when she wakes, alone, in their old apartment. Who is at the docks already, pale, slim legs kicking outwards casually, contentedly, as Louise arrives breathlessly on the scene.

Wherever this girl appears in her dreams, there is sunlight. Just seconds before it is a downpour of sleet that stings her skin. But at the very second she sees the back of that golden head, the sky breaks apart and everything flushes yellow and pink.

Louise doesn't know who she is, but she thinks that the girl knows her.

"You haven't left yet," the girl says this time, only the slimmest section of her cheek and jaw visible as Louise stands, drenched to the bone, dazzled by the sunlight that was absent just half a second before. "You know you can't stay here. It's no good for you."

The young blonde kicks out her feet, splashing water clearer than Gotham's waterfront has ever been. But that's the way it is when this stranger is present – pure, clean, beautiful.

Before answering, Louise scans the expanse of cerulean waves, rippling softly in the sunlight, calmer than anything she'd ever seen in a dream. Way off, in the distance, where the sunlight does not touch, there is a blackness that is much more in fitting with the normal nightmare; it creeps closer and closer. The young girl sighs.

"This isn't real. But you shouldn't stay to find out."

Louise doesn't know what to say to this stranger, because she recognizes somehow that her presence here is _wrong_ – that this stranger has intruded on a dream that was never meant for her, warping it, changing it in a way that confuses and muddles Louise's mind. Throwing things into chaos; like stepping into a field and starting to bloom tulips where there was always only wild daisies.

Meanwhile, the darkness is encroaching quickly. The young girl doesn't move, and though Louise's hair is whipping up into a frenzy, slashing at her face, the quaint curls of the intruder are immovable and smooth. Not a single out of place.

With steady movements the young blonde stands with hands straight at her sides, shoulders back, completely confident and at ease, while Louise is folding in upon herself, fully realizing what comes next in this nightmare sequence. Jack, his body, the screams, the waking, the tears. She sees it even then, and there's no way to stop it.

Like clockwork his body appears far out, flailing in the waves, and Louise breathes sharply only twice before she takes off running, throwing herself out into the water to go save him. Before she is completely immersed she hears the voice call out, "It isn't real, Louise!"

Then nothing. The rush of water pounding against her inner ear and the muffled suspension of everything for just an instant, before she breaks the surface and is assaulted by noise, so loud she can hardly hear her gasping breath.

A wave crashes over her head and throttles her under, her body spinning out of her control as she goes down, down, losing Jack before she even started the search. After tedious seconds of struggling that feel like lifetimes on their own, she sets off for the surface, her air almost gone.

Even the drowning feels somehow different, this time.

The surface is near but never near enough, and with every thrashing movement her legs cut through the water the light above her gets narrower and narrower, until she loses all hope of ever breathing again. Her arms reach out above her, grasping for air that is unreachable.

And then something plunges down and Louise is being pulled upwards, pressure around her wrist, up, up, until she is gasping oxygen into her lungs, hair plastered over her eyes, coating the world in fuzzy streaks of dark brown.

The blonde girl lets go of Louise's arm and sits back on the dock.

"You used to be so strong . . ." The girl's voice sounds sad, edged with anger, oblivious to Louise's gasping state as the older woman clings to the warped wood of the dock. "I wish I could be there for you. But I can't. So you're going to have to listen to me, Louise, when I tell you to leave. Get out of here. _Leave Gotham_."

Louise pushes her hair aside and glares up, finally determined to look this stranger straight in the eye and ask her just who the hell she thinks she is.

And that is when she wakes.

* * *

The fifth of November dawned crisply; a blooming sun peaking over the towers of darkness that made up the heart of Gotham City. The sun was a welcome relief. Somewhere in the Narrows a homeless child was finally able to close his eyes and get some sleep, the aching chill of the early November night subsiding briefly for another twelve hours. In the main part of town, back alleys that ran behind respected businesses, a young girl of no more than fourteen was counting her money and pulling off the fishnet tights that weighed heavily, like chains, on her luxuriant nymphet legs. And in a tiny apartment in the heart of the city, Louise Speller was recovering, once again, from a hangover of epic proportions, with a nameless man by her side.

This time it was her bed; his walk of shame. Or pride. Men dealt with those thing so differently. The trick was slipping out of the bed without waking him and removing all evidence of impassioned embraces. With quiet steps she gathered up the masculine clothes strewn about the room and placed them carefully at the end of the bed – something a mother would do; as bland and platonic as anything could be. The next trick was making herself scarce. Slipping into her bathroom and locking the door behind her and then showering. If he called she would pretend not to hear; the water, after all, resounded so loudly against the plexiglass sliding door.

And so it went. She pretended she did not hear the man's inquiries as to whether or not she wanted breakfast, and at the same time she pretended that the water rushing down her drain, gurgling, like the copper pipes were ravenous and could not devour her filth fast enough, did not remind her of the dreams. Rotting corpses and rushing storm drains and tumultuous waves . . . Cheap strawberry shampoo and a Venus razor against her skin and a steamy mirror. It was all relative, she supposed. Part fantasy and reality. The only difficult part was trying to sort out just which was which. Most of the time the dawn of the morning, the last persevering rays of sunshine that belonged to the summer months bursting over the city with a cry of short-lived triumph, felt disturbingly unreal to her. Decomposing loved ones were so much more in fitting with Gotham's agenda, after all.

But she was used to it by now. Three months in and things were getting easier. A routine that you just had to get used to. It was something she remembered. The darkness. In a way she'd never forgot. It had followed her even into the bright glass city of Metropolis, where at any given moment you could step up to an office building and wave to a person standing on the other side, looking in. It was all crystal there, all open and inviting and airy. Here it was dark and hidden and the doors were locked and the windows were shuttered and nailed, and there could be a plethora of heinous atrocities going on behind those walls made of two feet thick brick and mortar, but hell if you could find anybody who would take the time to check. That just wasn't how things operated. And, no matter how altruistic and awe-shucks you were on arrival, it was something you got used to quickly. Or else.

Gotham spared no one. Especially not the rosy-cheeked legions of the hopeful.

* * *

It was exactly eleven fifty-eight when the fireworks began.

The cruelty of it all was that she and Sara weren't even supposed to be down that street. If it hadn't been for Louise they would have taken that ride with those two cute college grads, the ones studying to be Officers of the Law, as they said in their important (slightly pompous) voices. A.K.A fish food, more decomposing bodies that the girls they loved would be haunted by visions of for the rest of their lives. It was Louise's own personal belief that anybody who aspired to join the ranks of the Boys In Blue in Gotham City was either morally corrupt, masochistic, suicidal, or generally shit-for-brains idiotic. Which is why, when Sara shot her a pleading look, Louise shook her head and told her that they really needed to get home and get some sleep, because there was that Big Meeting tomorrow with All The Important Executives, and didn't Sara want to look her best?

Sara did. They had waved goodbye to the nice boys (one petite blonde mumbling under her breath mutinously) and then made their way together on foot, in the opposite direction of where those men would have taken them. It was the fastest way to Louise's apartment, which was where Sara would crash until she woke early and went to the gym to take a treadmill-shaped blaster gun to her fat cells.

That was the plan, anyway. They hadn't anticipated the fireworks.

The first went up just as they were passing by the courthouse. The night had been still, chilly, with wind smelling of winter and tiny flurries of snow whipping by them. Despite this there were a number of people ambling about. Something to do with a rock concert. Most of the remaining loiterers were teenagers who were showing their parents that They Don't Own Them by staying out past their curfew and smoking blunts in large groups on the very steps of City Hall.

The firework had gone up in a hazing, spitting streak of yellow, attracting most of the attention in the square. The teenagers looked up with cigarettes dangling between their lips. One family, a picturesque couple with a little child dangling between them as they swung her back and forth, turned and crowed up at the sky. The father bent down and lifted the little girl onto his shoulders so she could see better as the firework burst into a circle of green sparks and rained down in the sky. Sara and Louise had stopped meandering and making scathing comments about the degeneracy of youth to stare up in wonder.

The second had come directly after, and this one had exploded more violently, hissing as purple tendrils branched off of the original circular form and creating a weeping-willow effect. A couple girls cooed and grabbed the arms of their boyfriends, trying to make them understand the brilliance of such an unexpected treat. The boys sneered but their eyes, too, were turned towards the stars.

"Must be for that concert or something." Sara shrugged. As the third and fourth fireworks shot into the sky, a gust of ill-meaning November wind swept by and took off Sara's kicky beret, sweeping it across the street. It came to rest at the steps of the courthouse and Sara, never the one to lose a garment that had cost her fifty-seven dollars at Saks, raced after it.

The fifth shot up into the sky, another green. Louise saw Sara bend down to pick up her cap. Saw the upturned faces of smiling Gotham citizens, the majority of them young and more-or-less innocent, with the flickering reflection of firelight glowing on their promising faces. Saw the young couple with the man carrying his daughter on his shoulders raise their arms to point up at the sky, that canvas of purple and green.

And then the world burst apart.

The courthouse imploded, crumbled like a wilting _souffle_, a giant plume of orange and red flames shattering the stonework and showering the street with debris that rained from the sky and crushed skulls with the force of impact. There wasn't a chance to scream before the second explosion shook the entire street, and the only thing Louise felt was scorching, dry heat and an overwhelming pressure throttling against her body, and she thought, for a moment, that she must be flying, falling, dying, and everything was a roar of absolute din and complete silence as she soared.

The ground came up and caught her. Or maybe it was the other way around. She only knew that gravity was sitting on her chest, a poltergeist, and she couldn't breathe, couldn't see, couldn't think. It was a vacuum that she was in, drifting in space at the edge of a black hole, and if she moved just one limb she would plummet into nothingness, forever, and for all eternity she'd be falling.

_Don't move, don't move. _

She didn't pierce the suctioned roar of her vacuum – the screams did. One instant there was nothing, and she was dangling on the precipice of absolute annihilation, and the next . . . . the next she woke up in Hell, and her ears were bleeding, literally dripping blood that she could feel sticky and hot on her neck. Everything was muffled, but the piercing shrieks of distress reached even her damaged eardrums. On her back looking up she could see the flames licking the skyline all around her, surrounding her, and she realized that Dante was right, Hell _was_ made up of circles. It was all smoggy yellows and reds and blazing oranges. Black smoke curled and distorted the even blacker night, blotted out the stars, separated the sufferers from their God and their heaven and trapped them underneath of that blanket of damnation that would reach down with curling fingers and consume them.

For an eternity she laid there flat on her back, staring, stunned and paralyzed with fear, up at that demonic sky. If she moved one inch she'd draw attention to herself, and it would reach down and take her. . . .

She might have rested there forever, surrounded by rubble and flaming pieces of clothing still clotted with the blood of their owners, if a man hadn't hooked his hands under her arms and hauled her to her feet. He was saying something, screaming into her face, but it was like they were underwater and nothing made sense. It was just a garble of deep words, a fuzzy rumble that tickled, and hurt like an earache. She was sore, injured, her head throbbing and her bones aching from the impact. And her skin felt burned, like she'd fallen asleep on a beach, in the sun, without her sun block.

The man kept speaking, a garbled mess of sounds. She shook her head to let him know she couldn't understand, and it was then he noticed her ears and finally stopped talking. His eyes darted back and forth for a moment and then he raised one hand to gesture at her to wait, stay right there, don't move! And then he turned and darted away, and her eyes followed him, and for the first time she saw the source of this Hell.

The quaint, normal scene she'd experienced in those seconds before the world had lit on fire had been desecrated. She'd fallen through the rabbit hole and woken up in an alternate dimension, blood and rust and flame. Her breath came harsh and fast, the smoke burning her throat raw and catching in her lungs until the air came hard and arduous. She knew she was breathing but she could not hear it, so maybe it wasn't real, maybe she was actually suffocating and she didn't realize and that was why her head swam.

Or maybe it was the bodies. The bodies lying scattered everywhere, littering the street in between large chunks of white marble and black ash and scorched papers. The courthouse was a smoldering pile of rubble now, bits of walls still standing but lined with flames and in the process of crumbling. The sidewalk across from her was split, and at the far end a pipe had burst and there was something spraying upwards into the air, and she wasn't sure if it was water or waste. Whatever it was it was flowing into the street, drenching the bodies . . . the bodies.

They were torn apart, to pieces. A young body with scorched black clothing was lying headless not twenty feet in front of her. Farther back there was a group of those same teenagers she'd seen smoking blunts next to city hall lying in a large pile of flaming flesh, all of them on fire, reduced to the very ashes they'd loved to suck while still alive. The young mother she'd seen standing next to her husband, her daughter on his shoulders, was the screamer. She stood in the middle of the wreckage burnt and bloody, holding the limp form of a limbless child in her arms and shrieking inhumanly. Just next to where she stood in her grief, the man who had pulled Louise up hurrying over to her and trying to wrestle the mutilated child from her arms and get her to calm down, was where the steps of the courthouse used to be. Now there was only a pile of rocks from where the front of the building had collapsed, glowing red from the reflected firelight. And underneath of that massive weight there lay tiny Sara Burton and her kicky beret.

Louise couldn't scream or cry; her eyes and throat were too dry, coated with ash. The most she could do was stumble forward to that mass of shredded stone and dig through the blocks in an insane attempt to scavenge for a body that her rational mind knew was long gone, blown to pieces or burnt in the fire or crushed to death beneath of all that marble and cement. The skin on her fingertips scraped off; they started to bleed.

She'd gotten halfway down before she stopped and thought about what she might find once she got to the bottom – another wrecked, mangled corpse to haunt her dreams – and she scurried backwards, nearly breaking her ankle on a particularly large chunk of brick that had rolled into the street. From then on she trained her gaze on the ground instead of her surroundings, instead of on the people running insanely, aimlessly, through the wreckage as they surveyed the scene, sobbing, screaming, tugging at their hair. Late arrivers; five minutes sooner and it could have been them lying in pieces, scattered.

It was while she was staring at the ground that her eyes finally focused in on the paper that was coating the street in between the bodies and the debris, and she realized that it wasn't paper at all – it was a blanket of small rectangular cards, swirling designs etched on the back. Playing cards.

She bent and picked one up, its edges still smoldering, and flipped it over, already anticipating what she would find.

On the back of the card there was a single laughing figure dressed in lurid purple and green, the words **JOKER** stamped down the sides, symmetrical. And scrawled onto the card there was a messy black sentence that the firelight behind her illuminated clearly.

**Can Batman come out to play?**

* * *

"Nobody does it like the Joker."

The nurse that was supposed to be treating her was riveted to the television screen in her room, the tray of lumpy mashed potatoes and jiggling gelatin set negligently on Louise's blanketed lap.

The woman shook her bobbed head and turned to Louise with wide, glowing eyes.

"I always said it wasn't long before he broke out. Pure genius, that man. There isn't a wall created by God above that can keep him. People in this city think they can step up and fill his shoes. Petty crooks and mob bosses and that ghastly man terrorizing poor Bruce Wayne, but none of them, not _one_, come close to the Joker."

On the television the news began to broadcast footage of the explosion. The fireworks at eleven fifty-eight, and then, at one minute before midnight . . . . Louise clenched her eyes shut on the scene, only to find it painted on the inside of her eyelids.

"Please, turn it off."

The nurse didn't argue, thankfully.

"Poor thing. You're handling it well, though. Some of the others who witnessed it are . . . . well, they're gearing up for a one-way ticket to Arkham Asylum. And you're lucky. Your injuries are very minor. A lot of contusions, some minor lacerations . . . your biggest problem was the smoke inhalation and the perforated ear drums. A mild case, thankfully. No hearing impairment expected. But don't worry, you'll be released soon. You'll be fine."

The nurse bustled over and adjusted Louise's pillows and, once it became clear that she wouldn't be eating any more of the turkey club sandwich that looked more like the remains of those bodies the EMTs had scraped off of the pavement in front of the ruined court house, took the tray of nearly untouched food as well. She'd been there for three days. Three days since the man in the street had pulled her back from wandering aimlessly towards the direction of her apartment and into the back of an ambulance, where the screaming mother with third degree burns on her arms – she'd picked up her daughter's flaming carcass from amidst the debris – let out unholy screeches, begging for her baby, that Louise could still hear resounding in her mind if things ever got too quiet.

Smoke inhalation, her ear drums, bruises and cuts and surface burns from the brunt of the explosion that salves and gauze and a few stitches and a bit of pure oxygen could cure easily. Her throat was healing and they'd release her soon; they didn't have room for a case like her, she knew that. Part of her, most of her, dreaded leaving. Dreaded walking back out into that city, where at any minute another building could explode in a shower of mangled flesh and architecture. Where even her grim, pessimistic view of the city was torn apart at the seams and replaced by something else entirely, something mottled and seething and satanic.

The Joker had been something delusory, a cautionary nightmare tale that Gothamites told to the new kids to keep them on their toes. As with anything else he had existed only in her mind, not in any actual plane of existence. She hadn't experienced him first hand before his imprisonment; thus, he was nothing more or less than hearsay.

But that wasn't true, not anymore. Him, this stranger, this madman – he was burned into her skin where the heat had struck her; branded in the memories that her mind repeated ceaselessly, of dismembered bodies that had been alive, youthful, just _moments_ before. And he had done it. One man.

Towards the end of that third day of her hospitalization a man came to visit her, someone she'd never seen before. He came knocking, a soft but commanding rap that jerked her from a vacant-eyed stare and disturbed reverie. It took her a full moment before she processed that who she was looking at was a police officer. It had been expected, of course. As a witness, a survivor, of course she would have to give a statement about what happened. To better examine the facts.

"Miss Speller?" He knew her name, like he'd rehearsed it so that when he came in he didn't fumble; engendered her respect and cooperation right off the bat. The voice was low and gentle, soothing in a way, almost fatherly. It was conducive to his appearance – salt-and-pepper hair, a toothbrush mustache, kind eyes, wire-rimmed glasses perched on the nose – but somehow not to his profession. Of all the cops she'd seen thus far they all looked and acted more-or-less like the man she'd met on her first day in Gotham, when she'd asked about the graves. Pompous and disinterested.

He'd moved into the room when she did not object and pulled up a dingy yellow plastic chair that was set up next to the bed for visitors. It had stayed empty throughout her stay. He held a small spiral notepad and pen in his hand that he tucked underneath of his arm as he sat down, adjusting his slacks and straightening his spectacles.

"I'm Commissioner Jim Gordon." With a placating level of intentness he examined her over the tops of his glasses, leaning forward with relaxed posture. He was trying to make her feel comfortable, she recognized; make the interrogation portion of this go smoothly, with as little post-traumatic stress blubbering as possible. "I've been waiting to get your statement for a couple of days now. I thought it was best to not interrupt with your treatment. I understand you're going to be released sometime later tonight?"

"Yeah." Her voice was still raspy. She cleared it, but it did very little. When she spoke next it was even worse than it had been on that first word. "I guess so."

Jim Gordon flipped open his note pad and poised the tip of his pen over the fresh paper. Louise took this time to examine his face up close. She noted the deep lines around his mouth – more from frowning than smiling, – the crow's feet at the edges of his stoic eyes, the creases that made his forehead so expressive. The bags under his eyes blew the worst of hers out of the water – she'd never seen a person look so haggard in her entire life. But she supposed being the police commissioner of Gotham City would do that to a man. It was a wonder he wasn't insane already. Or dead.

"I know this is a sensitive topic for you, but it's very important that I get your account of what happened. Most of the other witnesses came after the explosions occurred. The other survivor on the scene is in no condition to speak about what happened. She lost her husband and . . . . and her daughter." He blinked, faltered on the last word, and Louise noted the faded gold wedding band that his right hand unconsciously reached for. It was a bit too big for his finger and, because of this, he kept the tip of that finger bent, as if in preparation for the time it would slide straight off and drop to the ground. She had a feeling the weight loss might be a recent development.

"If you could, tell me the series of events that led up to you being situated in front of the courthouse at eleven fifty-eight on the fifth of November." Succinctly, officially, but only for a moment. He stopped fiddling with his ring and crossed his right leg over his left, perching the notepad on his knee, in position to scribble down her words once again. This time he waited for her to begin, and when she faltered, thinking of Sara and how she had begged Louise to take that ride from those grad students, he said, "Take your time," understandingly.

But it wasn't necessary, really. She was conditioned to tragedy, and in terms of severity this hadn't been at the top of her personal anguish list.

With many sips of the water sitting on the tray connected to her bed, Louise explained the night exactly as she remembered it. The kids lolling about, the perfect little family, Sara's beret, and the fireworks, green and purple. When she stated the colors she saw Gordon's lips twitch for just an instant; his hand came up to run through his hair almost instinctively, like he was so used to doing it that it happened almost outside of his control.

Another sip, then the explosions. The first wave, breaking down the structure of the building itself, and then the second, which must have been in the sewers just beneath of the street for all the damage it had done. A larger sip, bordering on a gulp, to postpone when she would have to describe the carnage. But that, too, came and went, and none of her information seemed to come as news to the commissioner. He would obviously know it all, by now. Including the last bit of her information – the playing card, the message to the Batman. As soon as she conveyed the message Gordon's hand stuttered in its smooth cursive, blotting out a word on a neat line just above where he was writing. Louise found she didn't much care to know the reason behind the jumpiness. It hardly mattered.

"How did he escape?" she asked, trying to keep her voice from sounding too accusing. Jim Gordon sighed wearily, a gusty exhale that explained most of what she needed to know. They really had no idea.

"The Joker is an . . . extremely difficult person to contain." Gordon said, closing his notepad and sitting upright in the plastic chair. "He has a way with manipulating pliable minds. And minds like that are almost too easy to find in a place like Arkham. Right now we're under the impression that . . . . someone . . . . working for the asylum was coerced into helping him escape. The fireworks seemed to serve as a distraction for his actual breakout. We're still looking into how he did it; the particulars . . ."

Meaning, she knew, that he simply couldn't tell her.

Louise blinked up at the ceiling and then sighed, her throat scratchy and sore from all the talking. Smoke inhalation was always played off to be such a trivial thing; she certainly had never expected it to be such a bitch. But then, at least she wasn't dead.

Gordon tapped the end of his pen against the glossy cover of his notepad and cleared his throat, almost uncomfortably.

"Have you been watching much of the news, Miss Speller?" Gordon asked finally, and she realized that they must have been sitting in silence for some minutes. She seemed to lose track so easily.

Louise shook her head, but this didn't seem to be surprising to him. With his thumb he pushed his glasses up farther onto the bridge of his nose and sighed again.

"As one of the only witnesses to the entire attack you've become somewhat of a . . . . desirable asset . . . . to the news stations in this city." Said with a touch of bitterness; disgust. "They're competing viciously for an in-depth interview. I feel I should warn you that, when you're released, it's very possible you might be waylaid by several reporters. I have one of my men ready to escort you to your home, if you don't object?"

Louise shook her head no, she did not mind, in fact she preferred it, but by now she was too tired of talking to voice such a sentiment. She wished she could beg this kind man to take her out of the city all together, drop her off in Metropolis where it was bright and hopeful and there was still happiness.

"Do you have any relations we can call? Friends, family, a husband, a boyfriend?" The commissioner scanned her face and then glanced around the room, where no personal belongings or stacks of magazines or discarded coffee cups with lipstick stains on the rims sat, indicating visitors.

She shook her head again, once, and then closed her eyes on him.

* * *

"You ready, Ma'am?"

Louise nodded and hiked her purse farther over her shoulder. Jim Gordon had left and, two hours later, she'd been cleared for release. The hospital staff did not say goodbye. They barely recognized her once she put on her clothes and pulled back her hair. If anybody asked if she had been there by describing her face, they would have no idea. She was a name, a case number. No personal touches. Not in Gotham.

The man who was charged to escort her home wasn't her ideal bodyguard. He was rounder around the middle than in the shoulders, but she supposed something was better than nothing. This proved true the instant the hospital doors slid open and a crowd of haggard men and women with cameras hanging around their necks snapped to attention and started screaming at her.

"Miss Speller, can you tell me about the explosion?"

"Did the fireworks _spell out_ anything in the sky?"

"You were good friends with one of the deceased, weren't you Miss Speller? Do you want to make a statement on Sara Burton's behalf?"

"If the Joker were in front of you right now, what would you have to say to him?"

"Did you _see_ the Joker on the scene that night? Did you hear his laughter?"

The police officer escorting her slung an arm around her shoulder and pressed on the back of her neck. She bowed her head and shielded her eyes but still the pictures popped and flashed in her eyes. She knew that they had gotten something to put in the papers, at least, even if her words would never come.

Louise pushed through the last of the clamoring crowd and slid into the back of a police car, double-layered iron mesh separating her from her bodyguard and another man, eating a taco, who winked at her and smiled.

"Celebrity, eh? You enjoyin' your fifteen minutes?"

She said nothing, only searched for a seatbelt that was not there. Criminals in Gotham would, of course, use any sort of metal clasp to the worst sort of advantage. And in the instance of a crash, who really cared if the scum riding in the back was protected?

Settling back uncomfortably, lifting a hand up to shield her face from the cameras that were now pressed up against the backseat window, Louise waited to be shuttled home and escorted up to her apartment where, she hoped, she would experience a moment of rest. The way Sara Burton's face kept popping into her head, she wasn't sure that was possible anywhere she went. Still, she was longing for her own space.

Another crowd, another bustling journey, more snapped photos. There were less people bunched outside of her home, for which she was grateful, and they were not permitted inside of the building. The police officer touched his fingers to his forehead once he reached her door and gave her a wobbly smile before turning and striding away, not bothering to check if she made it in safe. Not bothering to make sure nobody was inside to greet her.

There wasn't. It was just her empty apartment. Most of her logical brain knew that there was no reason for anyone to be inside of her home. No decaying, dainty blondes. No laughing clowns. They had other things to do besides haunt her – decompose, demolish buildings. Respectively.

She did not want to watch the news. She knew that her picture would undoubtedly show up, greasy hair and pallid face and slumped shoulders. But besides that, she didn't want to see another shooting of the fire, of the wreckage. Didn't want to hear the final death count.

So Louise sat on her couch, rigid back and staring, sightless eyes, and listened to the silence that wasn't complete but which surrounded her so completely. It was the humming of appliances and the slamming of doors floors down; the shuffling of heavy feet and the muffled laughter of teenagers probably breaking into a bottle of booze an apartment over; the whir of traffic out on the street and the honking of taxi cabs that were in a hurry to get where they were going, wherever that may be. The time seemed to tick by in hour increments. One hour, two hours, three hours. When she looked up to her clock after four tortuous hours she found that only five minutes had passed. That she was sitting in silence on her couch staring at nothing, with her television screen black and her body filthy and smelling of antiseptic, plain white institutional walls.

In a sort of trance she made the decision to stand, to undress where she stood in the middle of her living room, careless of anyone who might look up and see her through the bare windows, and bathe.

The shower she took served the purpose of reviving her infinitesimally. She at least had enough of her wits back to brush her hair and crawl into clothes that didn't reek of three long, horrible days. She ached to just forget it all. Close her eyes and open them on a world where such a horror had never happened to her. It always seemed like she felt that way, about everything. About Lola getting sick, dying. About Jack never coming home, being murdered. It was cruel that so many terrible things happened that she could not control, that so many suffered, and the cause of it seemed clear – Gotham. It was all, all because of this city. This hellish excuse for a teeming expanse of opportunity.

It took one last, fleeting, mind-shattering thought in the hazy minutes before unconsciousness stole over her to cement her decision of returning to Metropolis in one week's time, and the thought was this:

That after ten long years, the only man who had ever succeeded in making her forget Jack Napier's birthday – November the eighth, a day she had dreaded every year for a decade – was the Joker.


	24. Chapter 24

**A/N: **So, an **important memo **to my readers:

This story is now on a temporary hiatus, until further notice. I'm starting college in TWO DAYS – I know, exciting – and I obviously need to get my shit together before I spend time typing away on my laptop.

After this chapter here I have nothing else written – whether or not my creative juices start flowing and I become suddenly inspired is, I think, partially up to you. So far the story has lost a LOT of support, or so it seems, and I've been increasingly disappointed. It sucks to be so excited to share a chapter with you guys and then to find the response falls so much short of what I had hoped . . . . I do plan to continue on with the story at some point, though when that will be is hard to determine.

I love everyone who has reviewed so far! You honestly keep me going!

Anyway, enjoy this. I hope to hear from you guys!I'll be checking in!

* * *

_"How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?"_

_~Plato_

* * *

She was ice.

Freezing from the inside-out. In the absence of heat, of light, of flame, she froze. The darkness brought the chill with it, the chill of absence, the chill of bereavement. These chills aren't like the passing seasons – they hang on limbs and eat away with tiny pricks of frozen regret.

Regret that she hadn't said she loved him quite enough. Regret that he had never said it, ever.

It's agony for the lively to touch the ice for long. Warm flesh against frozen steel. They touch her, and it sears them.

It's impossible to love someone so frozen.

* * *

It was pouring rain when she woke. The droplets came down in sheets, a torrent, pounding against her window. It was almost slush, not quite hail, the typical November mix that made the streets hell to get through. She'd almost forgotten how dreary the winter months could be in Gotham.

In Metropolis there were ice rinks. Garlands strung and Christmas music pelting out on crackling speakers underneath of every store awning, two months early for the birth of Christ. That time of the year was almost sacred – there was a certain something in the atmosphere that came when December neared. A good will that swept over the populace and lifted spirits, despite the cold, despite the grey skies.

Gotham was, as always, the polar opposite.

During the winter in her old home, if Louise remembered, it was a barren wasteland. Starving children stared up at you with ravenous eyes and made you feel guilty that you had only just enough for your own Christmas dinner, let alone theirs. There were beggars perched at every street corner, warming hands next to fires that reeked of waste, scraps of food that were too spoiled to pass even their cracked and desperate lips. She remembered how cold the downtrodden, cramped apartments in the Narrows were. How she had shivered at night, alone. The way she'd walk into Jack's room to see him curled in on himself, tightly coiled, dressed in layers with the thinnest blanket they owned covering him, having sacrificed all others to Lola.

He had never complained. He'd always said that the cold couldn't touch him. That his veins were already made of ice.

It had been a while, but she remembered clearly how it had been during the cold months. In the Narrows. The city had been somewhat better, the Palisades had been, as always, a wonderland. But where she lived, where her heart was, it was always freezing.

Stepping outside late in the afternoon the next morning, on her way to grab a coffee and a bottle of Absolut that she couldn't afford, she realized that things hadn't really changed at all. The desperation of the Narrows had bled into the heart of the city, spilling over and polluting, until you couldn't tell the difference between those few "well-off" individuals and the starving. Maybe that was the point. Maybe in Gotham, everyone was starving for something.

She'd almost managed to forget about her run-in with the press until she turned the corner and ran smack into two reporters, one tall, one short, black trench coats wrapped tightly to shield from the rain and hats pulled down low over their faces, hiding their features from view. They lifted up their cameras immediately, the tall one snapping picture after picture in various exaggerated angles while the other fired a barrage of questions her way. All she'd heard before.

"No comment," she said quickly, skirting around the two men and walking as fast as she could. There really wasn't anything else she knew to say. She'd never been conditioned for press; only obscurity.

"Don't you think it's your duty to comment on the disaster you witnessed, Miss Speller?" the short one called out. To her dismay and annoyance she noted that his companion with the camera hasn't stopped taking photos of her. "Don't you have a sense of civic responsibility?"

Unable to formulate a coherent response to this attack so early in the morning, Louise decided to focus her annoyance on the man taking pictures, obviously the easier target.

"Could you stop, please, sir? I have nothing to say to you people." The man's finger paused over the top of his Nikon, and then, slowly, deliberately, he pressed it down, the flash popping directly in her eyes. Spots of white danced across her vision, sparking a headache that throbbed directly behind her eyeballs. Indignance rose up and forced out the next words as she turned to leave. "Are you stupid or something? I just said I want nothing to do with your and your sick story."

The man kept the camera raised, pointed at her.

"Why are you just standing there? I told you to get lost, asshole." She turned her back on the two men and made her way through the rain.

She'd walked ten feet before she heard a different voice, one that made her falter, one that made her breath catch in her throat, though she couldn't place why. Through the splattering of raindrops on the metallic lids of garbage cans, it sounded almost familiar, plucking at memories she'd thought she'd repressed long ago.

"I'm just . . . . praying," the insistent camera man called out, and if she wasn't mistaken she thought she recognized amusement in it; derision, almost. As if he was laughing at her. "This is how I pray."

She froze, ice cold raindrops slipping down her neck and disappearing into her blouse, drawing shivers out of her. Every comeback she'd ever had stuck in her throat and choked her, because out of anything that man could have said, nothing could have prepared her for something like that, something that only one boy had ever had the imagination or pure disregard for social etiquette, to say.

When she turned and called out, "Excuse me?", both of the men were already gone.

* * *

"You sound like shit." Mollie spoke bluntly into her ear, but underneath there was a quaver that was genuine and caring, something which made Louise pinch her nose in an effort to chase away the prickling feeling of tears that stung just behind her careful facade. "God, I swear I tried to get a plane there. But Gotham is off limits right now. No planes in. They're even being anal with anybody trying to drive."

"I know, don't worry about it."

"No, no, I should have . . . I mean, are you all right? Of course you're not, but fuck . . . Your picture was all over the national news for about ten seconds, you know?"

"I didn't watch . . ."

"'Course . . . Why would you? Those reporters are bastards. All of them. Exploiting you like that so soon after what happened . . ." Her voice trailed off, and Louise knew that she, too, wanted desperately to ask about the incident, but didn't dare.

"I'll tell you about it later. I just ran into a couple of those bastards myself. That's why I called." Louise paused. "I can't stay her anymore. I'm packing up my stuff again tonight and giving notice at my job. I feel like I'm going insane. Today, on the street, I could have sworn . . ." The tall reporter, his camera hiding his face, and that voice, and that comment, and the amusement lacing his words . . . . "But I'm being crazy. Christ, I'm going crazy."

"You're going through a tough time, that's all. It's expected. Just have a glass of brandy and watch _Friends_ or something. That usually chases the blues away. Then reconsider what you're thinking of doing."

"I don't think sitcoms are allowed in Hell, Mollie," Louise replied bitterly, only half kidding. "And I really don't think I'll change my mind. I was twenty feet away from my coworker getting crushed to death by an exploding building. How do you deal with that? How do you even _begin_ to . . . cope?"

Outside of the phone booth she'd shoved herself into the rain was coming down harder than ever. Each droplet that hit the ground rebounded, soaking the shoes and legs of anybody unlucky enough to be out on the streets. A scruffy looking man stepped out of a cab and rushed towards her phone booth as Mollie replied.

"You don't, really. That comes with time. You can't force recovery. If you could, half the starlets in Hollywood would spend a lot less time in and out of rehab."

The man banged on the glass door to her booth and mouthed "Hurry up" as Louise nodded, forgetting that Mollie couldn't see her, and then hurried to say, "I know, you're right . . ."

"Of course I am."

The man outside pounded on the glass with vigor, and Louise sighed. "I have to go. Yet another of Gotham's finest demanding this booth."

She slipped outside in the rain with her grocery bag dangling from her arm. The man gave her a wrathful glare before pushing past her and slamming the glass door shut in her face. She spent a minute or so just standing out in the rain, wondering which way would be the fastest back to her apartment, and wondering if there would ever be a time when she did not feel so hopelessly alone.

* * *

When she let herself back into her place the first thing she noticed was a manilla envelope lying conspicuously just inside of her door. Slipped underneath. On the front in bold black handwriting there was her name, **LOUISE SPELLER**, all capitals. She considered for a moment letting it be, forgetting about it all, but her anger that somebody had gone far enough to go up to her door and slip something underneath outweighed her desire to let the past be, and she tore open the paper flap with some difficulty.

There were glossy photographs inside. It took a minute to realize what they were, Gotham grey and imposing in the background and hazy streaks distorting the images. But then she understood: it was rain, and in the middle of the grey there was her, wrapped in her coat, her hair sticking to her face and her mouth open, as if in response to something.

The next was her hand pressed to her face, her eyes squinted. The one after that was her looking back over her shoulder, her brow furrowed and her lip cocked in a sort of grimace. They were the pictures that man, that rude photographer, had taken of her on the street just less than two hours before.

Appalled, Louise blinked rapidly and stared down at the three images, herself captured in still. She'd expected them to turn up in a paper, a tabloid, declaring something outrageous or insulting. But why would those reporters develop them and then slip them under her door? How had they even known which apartment was hers? What was the point? To intimidate her into speaking to them? But that was surely illegal . . .

She tossed them onto her counter in disgust, face down, and was ready to go forage for her cordless phone to call Mollie and share this injustice with her, when something caught her eye.

Taped to the back of one photo there was a Joker card, and underneath that, the words:

**I'll be watching**.

* * *

"So you _saw_ the Joker on the street?"

With extreme exasperation bordering on complete despair Louise repeated, almost pleaded, to the belligerent cop sitting in front of her taking her statement. "_No, _I told you, I couldn't see his face, but when I got back to my place there were the pictures, and the card on the back, and the message. I'm telling you it was the same handwriting as the playing card, the message to Batman . . ."

The cop sighed heavily and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "But you don't have these photographs. The card. Nothing?"

"I - I don't know . . . When I woke up . . . They were just gone. I swear, please, I _swear_ I'm not making this up. I didn't even want to sleep last night, but at five I dozed off and when I woke I went to grab them and they . . . . they weren't there."

"So do you admit the possibility that you may have dozed off prior to getting the pictures and _dreamed_ this occurrence? You _have _been through an ordeal, Ma'am."

"I didn't dream this, all right?" Louise dragged her fingers through her hair violently. "I'm telling you everything that happened. Could I speak with Commissioner Gordon? I think he might know . . . ."

"The Commissioner is dealing with heavy stuff right now, as you're well aware. You're lucky to be getting heard at all with everything that's happening." The cop nodded in the direction of a television stuck up in a corner, Gotham news running red and white messages across the screen as reporters with harried faces spoke into microphones, messages she couldn't hear. "The Joker's been busy, Miss. And honestly, what would he want to do with you? You're just some lucky woman who survived his coming home party. What I think you need to do is take a deep breath and get some sleep, maybe with the help of some mild prescription drugs. I bet you'll feel a lot better in the morning."

Dejected and profoundly alarmed, Louise sat disbelieving in the uncomfortable witness chair the officer had provided for her. If she hadn't had so much press in the last few days she was under the impression that nobody would have listened to her at all, and even this meeting had gotten her absolutely nowhere.

"I can't believe you're telling me to go home and sleep this off," Louise breathed heavily.

"I'm not, I'm telling you to chase it away with some very effective anti-depressants. Here's our number," He scribbled down seven digits on a scrap of paper with grease stains on it and then slid it across to her. "Call if you need anything else. I can't guarantee that we'll come running if you have another nightmare, but if there is legitimate cause for alarm we'll send somebody over as fast as possible." A flicker from the television turned his attention over the screen and he frowned unpleasantly. "If we have any men to spare, what with all the bats dropping like flies and scaring the hell out of everyone . . ."

"Bats?" Louise repeated dumbly, folding the message into her palm.

"The Joker. He's poisoning them with some sort of toxin. They're falling out of the skies by the dozens, the skin around their mouths stretched back. . . . like a smile. Each one tagged with a letter. It's a message. I'm sure you're smart enough to guess who to."

Paralyzed with fear at what the man was telling her, that on top of everything else the Joker seemed to be adept at creating toxins which killed animals by, supposedly, _laughter_ . . . .

"Hey, don't worry about it. Like I said, the freak's busy. Why would he take a break to come after you? It's the Bat he wants, and unless you're him, I think you'll be just fine."

He said that confidently enough, and Louise stood to go, but the reassurance, that meeting, being surrounded by, supposedly, able-bodied cops, protectors of justice and keepers of the peace . . . it did absolutely nothing to calm her nerves.

At each street corner there was a menace. Some man down on his luck, covered in his own filth, who reached out and implored for change and scared her senseless. Strangers who passed by her with their caps pulled down low or their raincoat hoods flipped up, or even their dark umbrellas shadowing their faces, seemed like monsters to her. Always watching. Waiting. Nobody was innocent, nobody was good. The dark November skies cast shadows over everyone in Gotham. She was in this city alone, with nobody to save her, nobody to understand or care if she suddenly disappeared. One of many pretty girls who, tragically but not unexpectedly, just didn't make it home that night.

She knew she hadn't imagined what had happened, and the only explanation for the fact that the photographs were gone in the morning was that somebody had come in to take them while she slept.

The notion that it was the Joker doing these things felt absurd, even to herself. But she couldn't deny the fact that _somebody_ had taken those pictures, and that same somebody had taped that card to the back. So this, perhaps, was some sick ploy a person was using to get under her skin. A reporter, maybe, in order to bribe her for information he thought she might be hiding? Or a psychopath, obsessed with the mass-murdering clown, desperate to emulate him, desperate to find a connection . . . Anything was possible, nothing was too far-fetched. She'd known this city, had lived it, had breathed it, and the constant paranoia was something that was familiar to her, something that came naturally, something that was almost pivotal to surviving. Let your guard down once, just once, while walking home . . .

And you wouldn't make it home.

At this point it was hard to _want_ to make it home. She stood in front of her apartment building for thirty minutes in the depressing mid-afternoon drizzle just evaluating the options, letting the possibilities of what may happen stream through her head at a thousand thoughts per minute. If she went in, then . . . if somebody was waiting for her; if there was another batch of pictures, another note, another playing card, another reason to stay up all night paralyzed with fear. If she stayed out, then. . . . aimless wandering around dark, dodgy streets; passing strangers that sent her glances which made her teeth chatter with fear; finding, maybe, a man to go home with, just for one night . . .

It was decided with that very last thought. She steered herself towards the nearest bar and kept her eyes open for the slimmest hips; the curliest hair; the most sinful smile.

* * *

His name was George. That's what he told her, anyway. She could tell he was lying, the same way she could see the white band of flesh on his left ring finger that gave away his marital status. Not like she cared at this point. What she needed was a safe place to go, and while she couldn't be guaranteed that with George, who may just be wearing that Armani suit to cover up the meat cleaver he wore strapped to his chest, it was good enough. For the night, anyway.

George had a gorgeous apartment on the good side of town, the outskirts of Gotham that were just shy of the Palisades. He wasn't rich enough to get a place there yet, but he was certainly rich enough to send his wife and children to a summer home while the chaos in the city continued. What was truly important was that Louise was far away from her own tainted existence, that she was sipping on white wine with a cute man, and that for at least another night she would continue breathing. Something which she couldn't be sure about had she stayed at her own abode.

George took off his suit jacket and fiddled with his tie nervously, a clear indication that he'd never done something like this before, and Louise watched him peripherally, half amused and half ashamed, as he ran his fingers through his hair and cleared his throat uncomfortably.

"I, uh . . . I hope you like the wine."

Louise shrugged and replied, "Oh, sure. It's nice."

"You're really beautiful. I mean . . . not like most girls you find in a bar like that." He cleared his throat and shuffled his feet; sat down on the edge of an ottoman and then stood back up and adjusted his pants.

"Thank you."

"So, this . . . I mean, you . . . I'm willing to pay whatever you usually . . . . charge."

"I'm not a prostitute, George."

The look of absolute embarrassment that etched across George's face wasn't quite enough to make up for the mistake in the first place. It never seemed to lose its sting, no matter how many men mistook her for a call girl.

"I - I'm so sorry, I just thought . . ."

"Just . . . take off your clothes and get me another bottle, would you?"

George's words faded abruptly as he nodded soundlessly.

After his pressed and refined form disappeared into the kitchen she sagged backwards in her seat, pulling off her heels and combing fingers through her wild curls. It'd be so much easier if she could come to terms with sleeping with men for money on the side. God knows she could use it, and it wasn't like she wasn't going to do it anyway. But something about the word "prostitute" turned her stomach. Took her back to the Narrows, her cold apartment building that, in rounds, had either no water, no heat, or no electricity. Took her back to powdery white spread out in lines across all the shiny, flat surfaces. Took her back to grunting men in the night, creaking springs, and a sense of contamination that she couldn't escape no matter how tightly she pressed her pillows to her ears.

It took her back to her mother. And no matter how many men she slept with, she would never admit that she was like her.

Still, as her dress pooled at her feet and she slipped into a lavishly made-up bed, a married man in an expensive suit coming to greet her with an uncorked bottle of champagne, she couldn't help but note the resemblance.

* * *

George shook her awake.

She rolled over, groggily, angry that she hadn't woken in time to slip out unnoticed. When she pushed her hair from her face and looked up she was surprised to find Gentle-Lover George glaring down at her with malice in his eyes.

"Did you tell anybody you were going to be here?" he demanded harshly.

"What?" she croaked, far from understanding anything so early, so hungover.

"Did you _tell_ anybody? That you were you going to be here, with me, tonight?"

"No. . ."

"Then," George reached behind him and hoisted up a brown box, taped shut, with a single name written across in black ink, "how the hell did _this_ get delivered to my door at six in the morning?"

Her entire body went numb at the sight of the handwriting, bold and black and blocky: **LOUISE SPELLER. **

"I . . ."

"Is this some kind of scam or something? Go home with me and then . . . then bribe me for money to keep it from my wife? How much do you want? How much to keep this quiet?"

George reached into his night stand and took out a leather wallet. He threw hundreds down on the bedspread one after the other. "Five hundred? A thousand? What, what do you want?"

"I don't _want_ anything!" she protested, wrapping his dark, comfortable sheets around herself more tightly, as if in that action she could shield herself from everything. From George, from her personal shame at being naked in a married man's bed, from that box that she didn't want to open. "I didn't tell anyone I was here."

George grunted with disgust, "Fine, then open it. If there aren't pictures of us in there, I'll eat my sock. I know how you girls operate. I should have expected . . . ."

"Shut up," Louise snapped, "and get me a knife or something."

George scurried away, gave her time and space to run her fingers over the box. Unimpressive, cardboard. Taped with that brownish masking tape that movers use. The only distinctive feature about it was the name, written clearly across the top, almost . . . _angrily_. On closer inspection she noticed that, while obviously by the same hand, it seemed to be messier, as if done in a hurry. Or in a fury.

When George came back into the room and dropped a letter opener in her lap she stared at it, wondering if she even dared.

"Do it," George demanded, "or I will."

Trying to build herself up for what may be in the box – a thousand and one pictures of her and George? The head of a horse, perhaps? – she took up the letter opener and tore the tape on all sides, slicing right through her own name.

When she opened the box she thought, for a second, that it must be a mistake, because there was nothing in it. And then her eyes grew accustomed to the blackness she was seeing, and with a cry of terror she threw herself backwards, away from the bed, away from the box, scrambling across the floor and groping around for her clothes.

George, his face a mask of revulsion, looked from the box to her. "Son of a bitch . . . is that a _bat_?"

She didn't need to take a second look to know that yes, it was. And beneath its deathly smile there was a Joker card tied around its neck, one black word etched out across it, messy and blotted:

_**SLUT**_

* * *

There wasn't a mode of transportation fast enough to take her to the MCU as quickly as she desired. Two cabs and the use of her stinging bare feet against cement sidewalks later, she found herself sweaty and panting outside of the large stone building, half-rebuilt only months before. Her hair was wild, blowing in the stinging wind and coated with a layer of icy rain that fell one minute out of every ten.

Beneath of her breast bone her heart was pounding furiously; she couldn't get the sight of the contents of that box out of her mind. That dead bat, its mouth yawning and tiny yellow fangs glistening dully; its beady black eyes open and staring; its clawed and winged arms spread open and rigid. And those black words, one after the other: her name, I'll be watching, slut.

She knew she wasn't imagining things this time. George saw it; she'd heard his reaction. It wasn't her own mind twisting reality around to fit the distorted hell that Gotham surrounded her with. It was truth; fact. And she didn't know who was sending her those things: she only knew that whoever it was, was following her. That whoever it was, was insane. Dangerous. Terrifying.

The door swung open at the same time she stepped forward to grab the handle, and to her immense relief she ran smack into the officer she'd spoken to the day before.

In a rush of panic-streaked words she spewed out the entire story as the man stared at her in shock, a brown paper bag clutched in his fist.

"Whoa, whoa, slow down," he said finally, as she paused for breath. There were tears streaking down her face, mixed together with the rain and dried sweat. She couldn't remember a time in the last two weeks when she hadn't looked like shit. "Listen, do you have the box? The bat? The message?"

"No, _no_, God, I left it! I didn't want to carry it, I could barely stand to _look_ at it."

The man's eyes flickered away from her, doubtfully, and in desperation she reached out to grasp at his arm.

"_Please_," she pleaded, her voice raw. "_Please_ believe me. Why would I make this up? _How_ would I make this up?"

The officer shrugged hesitantly and then said, "Well . . . you come and see me yesterday with the same spiel. You can't provide proof. Evidence. I tell you about the bats. And today, after a night's sleep, you have this story . . . No box, no bat, no note. Ma'am, what do you suggest we do for you without proof? Half the crazies in Gotham call in complaining about their chicken nuggets turning into sea monsters or . . . Hell, seeing the Joker at the supermarket shopping for Crisco. I'm sorry. Maybe if there was less going on I could be more understanding. But we just don't have time or personnel to send somebody to your place for something that may or may not be real . . ."

Both fell silent, Louise staring blankly ahead in incredulity and the officer gazing at her with a mixture of concern and impatience. He reached out and rested one hand on her shoulder and then said, "Maybe you ought to see a doctor; get some help. You've been through hell. Nobody would judge."

She opened her mouth to tell him about George; tell him there was proof, evidence, a witness. But even as the words formed she knew she would find no help in the man who had held her in his arms last night – his loyalty rested solely with his family; with his own happiness. What did it matter to him if the whore he'd slept with the night before disappeared? In fact, wouldn't it be to his own advantage? Erase his infidelity permanently.

Her words died in her throat and all she could do is stand, shivering, shaking her head as the officer gave her a last nod and then turned and disappeared down the street.

No matter which way she spun it, Louise knew she was utterly alone. One in millions. Unnoticed as a single raindrop in the entire storm.

* * *

Nobody was in her apartment.

The fact that this relieved and shocked her so much was a testament to how insane her life had become in such a short period of time.

But it was true.

After checking and rechecking ten times over, in every possible spot a person might hide, knife in hand, Louise was finally able to sit down with a semblance of a sound mind and admit that, for the time being, she was indeed alone.

The next step was, of course, to decide what she was going to do. Leaving Gotham was paramount to her plans. As soon as possible. Her decision to come had been misguided; foolish. To see_ graves_? Of two people who were long dead, long decomposed. Gone, forever. It was her own stupid inability to come to terms with the fact that the only guy she'd ever loved was nothing but a pile of bones lying at the bottom of the river, if that, that had landed her in this situation. Scared out of her wits. In danger. At the very least a target for some insane creep with a Joker fixation; at the most, the Joker himself.

She couldn't wrap her mind around the latter possibility because, as the officer had said – why _would_ the Joker come after her? She had nothing to do with him; with Gotham; with Batman. She was too unimportant, in the grand scheme of things, for somebody as high profile, albeit entirely crazy, to take notice of. For this she supposed she should be grateful, but honestly, what was the difference between him and another? She imagined they would kill her equally as slowly.

Nonetheless, her own assurance that there was nobody lurking in the corners of her home and the double and triple checking of the locks on both doors and windows set her mind somewhat at ease. Enough for her to crawl into her bed, with her knife tucked underneath of the mattress and the direct line to the MCU resting on her night stand, and consider doing exactly what the negligent officer had suggested: Sleeping it off.

* * *

She wakes and, for once, he's lying beside her. The honey facets in his mop of curls are glowing in the morning light. He's already conscious, propped up on his elbow and staring down at her in amusement, one finger tracing sharp-angled shapes over the naked skin of her chest. His full lips are twitching, holding back a smile. His face is whole, beautiful, the first she's seen it in ten years at least. Looking up at him she feels like crying; seeing those dark eyes, that mischievous grin.

"It's about time," he murmurs, pressing his mouth to her cheekbone and lingering. "I've been waiting for you . . ."

The warmth of his skin blends with hers and she flushes hotly, but she doesn't make a single move to back away.

"Not as long as I have," she tells him.

He recognizes the strain in her voice, sees the wetness lining her eyes. With a _'tsk'_ he rolls onto his back and folds his arms behind his head, stretching out his body – long and lithe and mouth-watering – and sighs. "Why so glum? What's there to cry about?"

How to put it into words? Most of her doesn't even want to, but as always she can't control what happens in this separate world her mind creates for her.

"This. You. You're not really here . . . I'm going to wake up and you'll be gone. It'll be over. You'll . . . You'll be dead again."

He laughs, not with her, not at the situation, but at her, as he so often did.

"You're so naive, aren't you?" He rolls over and presses hot lips to her own trembling ones, his body, that body she covets day after day, seeks ceaselessly in other men, reaching every secret place of hers and setting her aflame. He kisses her long and hard, in the way he used to every night, as if he is laying claim on her, until she can't breathe, until she doesn't even want to.

At the moment she convinces herself the very best way to die is by Jack Napier taking her breath from her, he releases her, lets her gasp for air she doesn't even want anymore. As his lips trail lazily across her cheek to linger at her ear, his hand creeps down her leg, and she can feel her body arching up to meet his touch in anticipation.

"I can't go back to being dead . . ." he whispers, nipping at her earlobe, fingertips just centimeters away from slipping between her thighs. She holds her breath, in ecstasy, in agony, and waits for him to finish his words so they can really begin. "because I never died . . ."

She exhales heavily at those words, willing herself to drown in them, begging her mind to let her believe.

"Wake up, Louise," he says, kissing her collarbone.

The sky is darkening around her, the lines sharpening, becoming clearer, and Jack is fading. She reaches out and clutches at him, pulls him as close as possible, prays that it lasts for just a minute longer, just one minute, that's all she needs and maybe, maybe it'll be enough. But no matter how hard she clutches she knows she can't hold on to the dream – it's slipping away quickly; his bare skin is turning into rough fabric, his honeyed hair is darkening, and when he speaks next it's not a low murmur, but a harsh, high rasp.

"Wake _up_."

Her eyes snapped open, her body and mind suddenly aware of everything – of the man on top of her, of her own knife pressed to her throat, of the bloody red smile mocking her where she laid.

In the darkness of her apartment the Joker grinned down at her, eyes burning.

"'Morning, _sun_shine."


	25. Chapter 25

**A/N: **Well, here it is. I don't quite know about it yet . . . I'll work off of your feedback. I'm toying with the idea of rewriting it, but I wanted to post something at least. I did promise it on my profile and all, though I'm not sure how many of you saw that. I guess it depends on if you guys like it.

BTW, you guys totally misread me when I said I was taking a break! It had nothing to do with the number of reviews – that was disheartening, for sure, because I KNOW there are readers, as displayed by how many reviewed last chapter. BUT, I wasn't taking a break because I was pouting over that. Seriously, it was just because of college. I have like NO time.

Anyway, next chapter is getting completely overhauled and redone because I hate what I've written. So, could be that the next update is in mid-December. Sorry, broskis, but the college life of a pre-med student is tough.

I hope you all enjoy this! Please tell me if you do, or if you don't! Suggestions? I am in a rut & need inspiration.

* * *

_She dealt her pretty words like Blades -  
How glittering they shone -  
And every One unbared a Nerve  
Or wantoned with a Bone - _

_~ Emily Dickinson_

* * *

_"Scream."_

That was what parents always told children to do if a stranger ever pursued them, grabbed them, even _looked_ at them funny. Scream. Run. Fight. Bite. It always seemed so obvious. So simple. Louise had always wondered why it was necessary to make such a statement, to bother reinforcing it over and over. _Obviously _she would scream and fight. What else would she do, stand there and let them rape her? Maybe in Iowa it wasn't common practice to keep away from strangers, but in the big city, Louise had been convinced you were just _born_ knowing.

The problem was, when faced with true terror, it wasn't so simple. The constant reaffirming of the "rules" seemed understandable to her now, with the incarnation of evil itself pressed so forcefully against her she could hardly breathe. Her mind repeated those words over and over, trying to get her to obey, and yet . . . .

Scream. But she had no breath. Every command her brain sent to her mouth to open led only to strangled, gasping sounds that did not even resemble words. It was impossible to speak with a face like that smiling down at her; with the hands of a man who had killed hundreds of innocent people – her friend, teenagers, a little _child_ – holding a knife to her throat. There wasn't a semblance of coherency in her mind – it was entirely blank, filled only with the outside stresses that were currently and completely dominating her being. White makeup smeared over pale skin; black pits for eyes; bloody red messily covering even messier scars . . . . and the scars. Those, more than anything else, let her know that for whatever reason she was dealing with _The_ Joker. Not a crazy emulator, but the actual monster himself.

So if she could not scream, then Fight. But again, how could she? Her limbs felt paralyzed. She was terrified that if she moved even an inch from her current position the deadly steel of that knife would slice through her throat, as if she were made of nothing more than the creamy custard filling of the doughnuts she'd never allowed herself to eat. Finally, a thought:

She really wished she had indulged more.

With the elimination of those two cardinal rules, Louise was left with nothing. She could do nothing, say nothing. The only possible route was to simply wait for the man holding her life in his hands to do either of the things she currently could not.

All she could do was wait and wonder which he would choose: the Do, or the Say.

"Sorry to wake you," that voice drawled out, the one she'd heard a hundred times over on the Metropolis news but had never, _ever_ imagined she'd hear from just three inches away from her while she lay helpless in bed, "when you were obviously having such a _good_ dream . ."

In the state of uncomfortable pain and immeasurable terror she was in, it was difficult for her to comprehend exactly what the madman was referring to. Slowly her dream came back to her, one for the ages, the first time her mind had allowed her to see Jack Napier alive and well again in the past ten years. His inscrutable smile, the jocose tilt to his words, and his hands all over her, touching her, making her shiver . . . .

As realization dawned on her, a heavy blow to the chest, the Joker burst out laughing. That strange dream, the contradictory nature of it in relation to her own mind's disorder, stemmed not from a well-deserved reprieve but from the fact that the Joker had crawled into bed with her, crawled on top of her, and she'd unconsciously mistaken him for the man she still loved.

And he knew. She could tell he knew. She'd reacted to it. A lustful sigh, a murmur, the upward tilting of her hips, it was all indicative of what she'd been dreaming of, and he'd been there to witness it, had been on the receiving end of it.

Not only was she going to die, but she was going to die with the knowledge that before she did, she'd practically begged her murderer to fuck her.

"Embarrassed?"

Louise still couldn't speak, the knife still pressed firmly to her throat, slicing into her skin with every breath she took. Any more, the large gulp it would take for a scream for example, and she'd be introducing her windpipe to the sharp edge of a blade.

"Ah, _so_ sorry. Ya can't talk with this," he said, as if just realizing what he'd been doing. He removed the knife and dangled it over her face, pointed down, held by the very tips of his index and thumb, "against your throat, can you?"

Louise felt her eyes cross in the effort to keep them both on the swaying motion of that knife, so precariously held, her own personal Sword of Damocles. If he dropped it, by accident or by his own designs, it would stab right through one of her eyes. She squirmed frantically underneath of his heavy weight, bucking her hips in an attempt to throw him off or at least get her body out of the direct path of that wicked looking instrument.

Before she could move more than three inches in either direction the Joker had slammed his palm against her chest, knocking the wind out of her and holding her firm against her pillows.

"I think we've had enough of _that_," he pressed his hips firmly against hers in demonstration, "tonight. Didn't you get enough with that suit you picked up? Or didn't he know where . . ."

The leathery tip of one of his gloved fingers dipped beneath the neckline of her top and brushed along the swell of her breasts.

"To . . ."

Strands of wavy hair tickled her cheek as he lowered her face to hers, painted lips brushing the hollow of her throat.

"_Touch_?"

Louise was breathless with fear. Her chest rose and fell rapidly against the Joker's hand. With every scrap of will left in her body she prayed that this was all a nightmare, that even after all she'd done, how horrible she'd been, the way she'd defiled her body, that her God might be forgiving and take pity on her now. She couldn't believe that she deserved this. That whatever came next were her just rewards. Over the past ten years she'd drank too much, slept around too often, and cared too little about other people, but she didn't deserve to die. Not like this, not at the hands of a man who was infamous for the way he killed.

"Please," Her staggered breath whispered out of her throat with far less intensity than she imagined it would; laced with fear and quavering, "I –"

What came next was undecided, but Louise didn't need to worry about that, because with a roll of his darkly painted eyes, the Joker cut her short.

"You would _think_," he began, tongue running along his bottom lip and then retreating back into his mouth, "that after all that time you laid there speechless, you'd've come up with something a li-_ttle_ more imaginative than _'Please'_. I'm disappoin_t_ed, Louise. Try again, try again."

The way he said her name bothered her. It was familiar, as if he'd known her for years. It was taunting, as if he was daring her to tell him to stop using it in such a way. It was almost sarcastic, mocking, as though he were making fun of it.

It brought to mind the confusion she felt at his being there, at his targeting her, and since this was the only thing she could think of as his knife swung like a pendulum above her face, waiting for her response and getting lower and closer every second she did not speak, she blurted out the only thing she could.

"W-Why? What did I _do_?"

The knife halted in its swaying descent, and from where he was perched astride her hips, pressing her firmly down, the Joker paused and appeared to think.

"There's no reason to do this. To use me or kill me or whatever you're doing, just – just please, I'm not worth it. Nobody will care. I only just came to Gotham, I - I haven't got any connections, I don't know anybody important. I have no family. I don't know why you're doing this but I _promise, _I promise, it's a waste of your time."

She finished in a rush, her speech breathless and raspy. Every hair on her body stood on end as she waited for the monster's response, some sort of clue as to _why_ he was here, why he was doing what he was doing. Because of her face on the news? Because she'd _lived_ when he hadn't wanted anybody to? Just because? It all seemed too wild, even for a man who dressed in purple and painted his face like a clown's. There had to be a motive. There had to have been something she did to provoke this. There had to be some way to change his mind; some way to stop this.

Louise could not wrap her mind around an instance where there was not a way, because that would mean that everything was coming to an end right then, and she was helpless to stop it. And that was inconceivable.

Somewhere outside on the streets of Gotham a car alarm went off. Louise flinched violently at the noise but the Joker hardly moved, his body stoic, a black hulking shape against the shadowy darkness of her bedroom. She'd left the bathroom light on and, due to the thin rays of light which peeked out from the cracks in the door, she was able to make out more details that held her in awe as she waited:

The dark hair that fell almost to his hunched shoulders. The purple overcoat that hung heavily on him and which rested in two small bunches on either side of Louise's hips. A small swatch of his clothing underneath – a vest so dark it looked black, but which she knew to be green, and a button-down shirt in a pattern she couldn't quite make out. It was surreal looking up at him, almost an out of body experience,

In an action which stunned her, the Joker swung himself off of her bed, his feet landing on her floor with a quiet thump. Within an instant he'd switched on her bedroom light and stood by her bed, examining the knife he'd found tucked under her mattress with the handle poking out, so easy to spot.

"I wouldn't have had any fun carving you with this one," he informed her, the edge of his mouth twitching. "You should get better cutlery."

Unsure and stunned, Louise slowly pulled herself up into a sitting position. She massaged her throat, crisscrossed with tiny slices. In the light she could see the Joker fully, down to the flash of brightly patterned socks that hid under the cuffs of his purple trousers. Each line in his face was illuminated, beige peeking out from underneath of flaky white. He stood with his shoulders forward; his eyes intense and searching.

From inside of his overcoat he pulled out a knife of equal size and held it up for her to see: Two separate pointed sections curved up, one slightly shorter than the other. They almost resembled unequal pincers, or a pair of nightmare tongs. Four separate edges to inflict unimaginable pain, all packed into one, neat weapon.

"Now _this _is more like it."

Louise shivered at the tenderness in the man's voice as he examined the knife from base to tip. With her eyes trained on the Joker she began inching away from him, towards the opposite side of her bed. If, maybe, she got all the way to the edge, she might be able to hop onto the floor and make a run for the door before he had time to stop her. From there she wasn't sure; she'd have to make it up as she went. But staying put certainly wasn't an option. Despite how bleak her life had been, Louise knew she wanted to live. There was Mollie, and waking up to sunlight, and she hadn't been married yet, hadn't had children, hadn't even fallen in love again. For the first time she regretted all those wasted moments pining over Jack, when it was obvious now she might have been happy.

But it seemed like it was too late, now.

"You move another millimeter and I'll run you through with this."

His piercing eyes held hers as she caught her breath and froze; guilty, hopeless. For a long moment neither spoke, Louise held transfixed by a gaze so smoldering she found she couldn't look away.

"I came here tonight because I thought you knew . . . ." The tip of his glove tapped thoughtfully against the flat side of the knife.

As if in decision about something the Joker clucked his tongue against the side of his cheek and shrugged his overcoat from his shoulders. There was clanking as he took it off. The coat hung heavy in his hands. With somewhat uncharacteristic care he folded it and laid it across the top of her dresser, knocking several perfume bottles to the ground to make way. They shattered one by one, each tinkling of glass making her jump in turn.

When he turned back to her he flexed his shoulders, standing up even taller. The patterned shirt he was wearing was in clear view, hexagons, but that wasn't what captured her attention the most. It wasn't his wacky outfit; the fact that he may be undressing in front of her and all the implications which came with that; nor even his macabre visage, those horrendous scars.

It was his body. More specifically, _his_ body.

In a flash of fever so overwhelming Louise nearly felt faint, her eyes soaked in the first body that had ever looked _exactly_ like the one she'd searched for for ten years. It wasn't adolescent – rather, it seemed as if it was only a more mature version of the form she longed for. The shoulders were moderately wide, nothing extensive, flowing almost gracefully into arms that were lean, thinly muscled. Arms that hoisted heavy objects at times and were accustomed to work, but which were not toned to perfection by hours at the gym. She _knew_ arms like that. She had felt them hold her; knew their steady assurance as they wrapped around her in the night.

She knew that chest, even hidden as it was beneath his vest and tie. How many nights had she rested her head against it; heard the heartbeat pounding away defiantly underneath of that skin? How many times had she kissed it as he hovered over her, head bowed and jaw clenched?

Seeing the long, spidery legs was like coming home after a long, exhausting day at school (the first day attended that week), and finding Jack home early, sprawled across the ripped and lumpy couch, his legs thrown over the broken arm, eyes closed, dozing.

And the hips . . . . she could write an epic poem, shocking in its content, about those hips.

But, she realized with a sinking heart, it wasn't right. Not _those_ hips. Out of all the men she'd met; all the men she'd slept with or searched through. Out of every one of them, _this_ had to be the man who embodied the boy she loved best. A murderer. A man so awful that he was reducing an entire city to chaos, just for his own amusement; killing helpless people without even blinking an eye. While _laughing_. _This_ was the man? _Him_?

It was so momentously unfair it was actually dizzying. All of her waiting, all of her praying, every single, breathless wish . . . . This is what the universe rewarded her with. This monster. One she couldn't touch, would not touch. A man who was contemplating killing her for, supposedly, daring to live through one of his catastrophic events.

She'd decided long ago that God must not exist, but this, this was the clincher.

No God could be this cruel.

With finality, decision, Louise shook her head and refocused. When she met the Joker's eyes again she was disturbed to find that he was studying her with a wrinkled brow and dark eyes, and had been the entire time she surveyed him.

"No . . ." he muttered, more to himself than to her, "You don't know. You don't remember."

"Know?" she whispered, barely audible, somehow even more terrified than before she'd recognized every feature she'd ever longed for on a man being casually flaunted by the intruder.

A muscle in his jaw twitched, as if she'd asked something taboo or forbidden and it had angered him. The very look he gave her sent pinpricks of dread through her body and she tensed, expecting his advance before he actually moved.

Three of those loping strides were all it took for him to cross the room and grab her face, jerking it so close to his own that she could smell his breath, something spicy that he'd eaten and the staleness of a late night. The dark eyes burned uncontrollably as she squirmed against him, opened her mouth to scream only to have him crash his hand against her mouth and nose, nearly suffocating her before he mercifully inched his hand lower, clearing her air passages.

"I came here because . . ." he paused, eyes wandering away from her face, flickering over her bare walls. His tongue prodded at his scars from the inside of his mouth, pushing them outwards, distorting them. She couldn't look away. "I saw your picture on the news. Imagine my _sur_prise when I checked in to survey the extent of my damage and I realized . . . . realized that I _know_ these eyes."

With his free hand he reached forward and traced a rough line across her cheekbone. "I _knew_ them. You know how long it's _been_ since I've remembered something before me? I thought I'd severed every tie I had, hacked my old life to itty bitty pieces, and then _you_ . . . . You were supposed to be _dead_! Buried and rotting. You weren't supposed to be walking down my streets and falling into my traps. You weren't supposed to be out there _breathing_. Living. _Sleeping _with other men." He shook his head violently, teeth bared and eyes glowing with malice.

Louise stared up at him in shock, shaking her head and grunting against his hand, trying to make him understand the mistake he'd made. Whoever this man was, whoever he thought _she _was – it was all a mistake. Every bit of this nightmare had come from a case of mistaken identity. A comedy of errors.

His fingers tightened around her chin, pinching into her skin, keeping her from making any motions. "You wanna say it's not true, don't you sweethear_t_? You wanna think that you could have . . . _never_ . . . had anything to do with a man like _me_, right?" The Joker laughed, high pitched and horrible. "But I was _everything_ to you, and before I kill you I'll make sure you remember it!"

Louise groaned against his hand in absolute despair as he brought up the knife and pressed it to her cheek. That it would come to this, this, a madman slicing her into pieces because of someone she had never been, could never be, no matter how much she willed it. She wanted to scream at the top of her lungs that it was wrong, he was wrong, she wasn't whoever he thought she was – a dead lover, long past? If only she could let him know, he might walk away. Let her free. . . .

But it was too late, now. Whatever ifs or buts there could have been; whatever police officer might have listened to her attentively, given her legitimate suggestions, helped her . . . it was too late. She was finished. Her life would be ending in agony in just minutes now, and there was only one thing left to look forward to . . . .

"D'you wanna know how I got these scars, Louise?"

In a smoky barroom a million years ago, Sara Burton told her that this was the last thing the victims of the Joker ever heard. A fictional story about how that grin got carved onto his cheeks and then . . . nothing. Pain, pain, pain, and then oblivion.

It was the end of the line, and the only thing Louise could think about was how long it might take for anyone to find her body.

The Joker ignored the tears leaking from her eyes and wetting the leather gloves he wore. He pulled her closer and spoke in a low voice, spinning a story for her. "Not many people know this, but I grew up in the Narrows. I wasn't _born_ evil. People don't . . . pop out and start slashing away. _No_. People like me are _made_. I was normal once. I had a family. I had a sister."

The blade of his knife grazed her cheekbone and Louise sobbed against that foreign hand. She could taste him on her lips, the last taste she would ever know. A taste of leather, of ash, of something tinny and metallic. It wasn't a pleasant mix, the same way the sight of him wasn't a great last look.

"Dad was a drinker who couldn't keep his fists to himself, and Mom, she wasn't around a lot, so I guess you can say that it was just me and my little sis, thick as thieves."

He faltered, and when the story resumed there was a more desperate tilt to his tone; something aching that almost made Louise believe each and every word that he uttered. She had to remind herself that this was what he did, this was how he played it with every victim. She was no different from the others; she was sentenced to the same appalling death. She was granted the same intimate story-telling, none of it truer than the last he had told.

"Until little sis gets sick one summer. Cancer. She gets so sick she can't even stand, can barely _breathe_, and we're so poor we can't even pay for her treatments. We live off of charity. Off of the _generous_ donations of the rich and the priv-i-leged."

He spat out the last words, bitter. Louise found that she was hardly blinking. It wasn't just his tone that had her riveted. The story, that story he was telling, was so eerily familiar that it was hard to put it off to just chance; hard to tell herself that he couldn't read her mind, and that was how he was reciting her boy's past to her, torturing her. Was this his final stab? Except . . . Except how would he possibly know?

"But it's not enough. It's _never_ enough. We can't afford to keep her alive. So I do the only thing that I can do. I sell my soul for a little bit of money. I get involved with the wrong people. I don't ask questions when they tell me to throw a trash bag dripping blood into the river. I kill people, and it pays, and it feels _right, _because for the first time _I'm _in charge of what happens to me, to my sister."

His grip tightened convulsively and she gasped as the pressure. It felt like he could break her jaw with ease, if he wanted. But even if he did she could hardly care, because his words, his words were ruining her, blasting her apart. For the first time, Louise looked past the black smudges around his eyes and saw the dark irises, flecked with green, alight with the thrill of the past, swept away by the retelling of this story. From far back she reached around for a memory and retrieved a sunny day, the taste of a toasted almond ice cream, a hungry little boy and Jack, standing in the sunlight, telling her the life of one single dollar bill. Swept away by a story.

He continued, his grip like iron, his eyes like coal, his voice grating and desperate, as if he was begging for an ending to this story different from the one he had on the tip of his tongue. Louise wanted to scream until her voice broke, sob unrestrainedly, because it was all dawning on her, and she just knew she couldn't take it. It couldn't be true, she wouldn't let herself believe it for one second, not yet. Even in her denial she was breaking apart.

"Until I got in over my head. I got greedy. I got cocky. I crossed one mobster . . . . too many."

The frenzy of his story built up to a crescendo and Louise could feel him shaking, feel the twitching of his fingers against her cheek; she saw the way his tongue continually wetted his lips, the way he chewed on the side of his mouth, almost in an unconscious tic, in the same way she used to bite her nails.

"I'm on the way home to my sister . . . my _girl_ . . . . with the last of that money I would have ever made, when that mobster catches me in an alley with a few thugs and a crowbar. They beat me, hold me down. He pulls out a knife and . . . ." His breathing was labored as he trailed off, eyes wide, and Louise was crying so hard she could barely see him through the tears.

With a violent gesture he released her, threw her back against her bedding, allowed her to suck in air and let out throaty sobs that shook her entire body. His hand went up to trace his scars as she covered her face with her hands and moaned into her palms, the same word. No. No. No. She wouldn't let this be true, couldn't live with herself if this was reality. Jack, a murderer. _Jack_. It couldn't be. It wasn't right, not like this. She would not believe it.

But that story. Those eyes. That body . . .

"I wake up a month later and everything is gone. My little, innocent sister is dead. Buried without me. And the guy who saved me tells me that _my_ girl is lying next to her. A cas_ual-_ty. I can't believe it." He shook his head violently. "So I check. The apartment it's, ah, it's bare."

He fell silent, crouched on her bed and peering down at her, just waiting for her to run out of other places to look. Her eyes were swollen already, her face wet with tears and her throat tight. That body, that voice, the man in the street. _I'm praying . . . This is how I pray. _Jack, on the street, a twelve year old child with bruises deforming his face. . . .

His funeral. The daisy she placed on the top of his empty grave. There had never been a body, but somehow Peyton Riley's assurance that he was, in fact, dead, seemed like enough. He had never come home. . . .

Because when he'd been able to, she'd already been gone.

"Oh, God . . ." she sobbed, sitting upright and burying her face in her raised knees.

"So now that the ghost of your past has caught up to you, _baby_ . . . . any last words?" There was a snarl on his face. It still looked foreign to her. That paint masked it so effectively that even in her current state of dawning recognition she still had trouble making out the boy who had meant everything to her. Perhaps it was due to the scars, which now seemed a thousand times more horrible. Or maybe it was the look in his eyes. A look that the boy who'd loved her would never have had.

A look that told her he was going to kill her.

What could she say? She'd prayed for this truth, that Jack was still alive somewhere, but never had she imagined _this_. This warped, nightmare permutation of her deepest wish. Jack, her Jack, the boy she'd loved, the boy who she'd seen dote on and care for and _love_ his sick baby sister – him, a murderer, so obviously insane. There was no way to describe the way she felt. It was all conflicting emotions, battling against each other, equally strong. There were no winners. Not in this.

Louise knew that out of the disjointed mess of thoughts and questions that she had in her mind, there was one thing she had to say, one thing she'd thought she'd never get to. It was something she owed to the best friend she'd ever had, something that was more important to speak aloud than any question burning on the tip of her tongue.

"L-Lola," she gasped out.

In an instant that hideous mask he wore, the snarling expression, froze, and Louise knew she had enough time to continue.

"She wanted me to tell you, when you came home, that she – she didn't want you to be angry about what happened to her. That it wasn – wasn't your fault." With a wet, tremulous breath she rushed on, her words breaking. "I'm so sorry. I'm so – I'm so . . ."

She watched him breathe, his body crouched over her and his muscles tense. In, out, in, out. It was such an ordinary action, out of place on him in those clothes; with that face. But it reminded her of one all-important fact: He was human. Strip him bare of everything and he was only a man. He was a man she knew, once, better than anyone.

The furrows in his brow deepened; his shoulders slumped. Instantaneously, Louise knew she was looking up into familiar eyes; that what she said had struck him deeply, somewhere past the insanity that ruled him. Now, if ever, there might be a chance . . .

With a shaking hand she reached out and placed her fingers against his exposed throat, bare of makeup.

Just like that, it was over. The eyes darkened and his fist curled, and she knew, even before it happened, that he was going to hit her.

Louise clenched her eyes shut tight, anticipating the blow, the blinding pain, perhaps even the unconsciousness. The seconds ticked by like minutes . . . . through the papery thinness of her eyelids she saw a bright light come from the direction of her bedroom window, brighter than the moon emerging from the clouds. The weight on the bed shifted. She felt cool air hit her thighs where the Joker had been crouching over her, her life in his hands, ready to snuff it out.

When she dared to look next he was at the window staring up. The white of his face glowed, ghastly, sending chills through her once again. He was smiling.

He moved rapidly, snatching his overcoat from her dresser and showering her floor with more of her belongings, most glass or porcelain that broke instantaneously. It wasn't until he reached her doorway and turned back to look at her, still lying on her bed, waiting for the heavy hand that didn't seem to be coming any longer, that she realized he was, inexplicably, leaving.

With one foot over her threshold he paused. Their eyes met.

"Don't get too comfortable,_ Louise_. . . ."

In one fluid motion he slid on his coat, adjusted the sleeves, pulled his gloves further up his wrists.

"We're not finished yet."

The words hung on the air even after he'd swept from the room, the hem of his violet overcoat whipping out of sight last.

Louise laid stunned, breathing shallowly, until she heard a window slam in her living room; clanging footsteps as he scrambled down the fire escape. It was only then that she pulled herself out of bed and stumbled over to find the source of the illumination.

There, floating like yellow fog in the sky, was the Bat signal. Restored; repaired. The first time it had kissed the Gotham night sky since a year before, after the death of Harvey Dent. After the disappearance of Batman.

The citizens of Gotham were crying out, belatedly, for help. And it was that cry that saved her.


	26. Chapter 26

A/N: Credit for the five stages of grief and accompanying descriptions goes to: **http : / / psychcentral . com / lib / 2006 / the-5-stages-of-loss-and-grief /** .

This is a short one; it is somewhat of a transition chapter. Anyway, enjoy.

Also, an **important memo** for my readers. I've addressed this issue before, but some newer reviewers may not have been with the story during that time, so I'll mention it again. Please leave only ONE review per chapter – leaving multiple reviews under anonymous names is an abuse of the review system, and frankly, it makes my story look bad. People examine the reviews of a story, oftentimes, to gauge reader responses. When I have a page of anonymous reviews that all sound similar in nature, it not only reflects badly on the story, it reflects badly on me. I have had a reader accuse me of posting those reviews myself to boost review count; it was a vicious accusation that I would rather not have repeated. I understand and appreciate the sentiment, guys, and I obviously can't be sure this is actually happening, but please, don't.

I apologize if this is not the case, and for yet another diatribe. I also don't want to make it seem like I do not want anonymous reviewers, or that you need an account to comment on my story. I simply do not want numerous reviews from the same person on the same chapter.

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_For every man there exists a bait which he cannot resist swallowing. _

_~Friedrich Nietzsche_

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**The Five Stages of Grief. **

**1. Denial and Isolation**

_It is a normal reaction to rationalize overwhelming emotions. It is a defense mechanism that buffers the immediate shock. We block out the words and hide from the facts._

Louise did not speak to a single person for five days. Her cell phone rang insistently; Mollie's number alighted on the tiny, scratched screen. Every time, Louise pressed 'Ignore'.

Her throat was crisscrossed with tiny slices; they stung like papercuts doused in lemon juice. Each time she swallowed, Louise felt the slashes contract. Those tiny, severed layers of skin never let her forget what had happened, but by the second day, she'd already begun to deny it.

He didn't have Jack's voice.

It was too dark to _really_ see the Joker's face.

Perhaps she had gone crazy, just as the police officer had said. Perhaps _nobody_ had pressed a knife to her throat at night. Perhaps she had scratched her own neck with her nails, in her fitful slumber.

Jack was dead. He was dead, and she had not made her peace with that yet, but it was at least something that seemed plausible to her. People die everyday. Yes, of course, it was far more rational to believe that Jack was dead, and that she'd gone crazy.

It was more comforting to believe she'd gone crazy.

**2. Anger**

_Reality and pain re-emerge. We are not ready. The intense emotion is deflected from our vulnerable core, redirected and expressed instead as anger._

It was his body that did it, that convinced Louise. Could she, after all those years spent searching for that body, fail to recognize it when it was right in front of her? No. She _knew_ that body. She knew those arms, and those legs, and that chest, and the sharp angles of those shoulders. If there was any _one_ person left in the world that could positively identify Jack Napier, then goddammit, she was _it_.

And she knew it was him. She had known even before she woke, when he crawled into bed with her, and Jack had pressed his lips to her throat in her dream. She _felt_ him. She _knew_ him.

She _hated_ him.

She _despised_ the monster he had become, for there no longer was any doubt that Jack had become a monster. She watched with red, swollen eyes as he wreaked destruction and mayhem on the city of Gotham. Daily, nightly, ceaselessly he bludgeoned the city with fear and chaos. He killed people, every day. She saw it. She saw the videos, saw his face, heard his _laughter_: that high, pitchy, demented chortle that went straight through her, like knives.

He had gone completely insane. He had let his mind, that beautiful, innovative mind, be reduced to _this_. This insanity, this weakness, this deranged sadism – they were all his now, he possessed them fully and relished the ownership.

Louise Speller despised Jack Napier so much in those three days that she thought it would burn her from the inside out, until she was nothing but a smoldering pile of her own loathing.

**3. Bargaining**

_The normal reaction to feelings of helplessness and vulnerability is often a need to regain control. Secretly, we may make a deal with God or our higher power in an attempt to postpone the inevitable. This is a weaker line of defense to protect us from the painful reality. _

On the eighth day, the anger broke. One moment, it was there, present and stifling inside of her. The next, it snapped.

Maybe it was the stress of it all, how tightly wound it had been, coiled up inside. Like guitar strings stretched taut and strummed viciously – something's gotta give. Maybe it was the dream she had that night.

She watched Jack, a shadowy league of Italian men surrounding him, get torn apart by knives. They chopped him into little, tiny pieces and then, laughing, stitched him back together and covered his sutures with thick, oily paint.

"Like new, huh? No one will even notice the difference."

Somewhere in the shadows, the ever-present blonde girl had watched. Louise saw her shoulders heaving and shaking. She was weeping.

Louise woke up, and the anger was gone; her face was slick with tears. She thought of everything that could have been; she grappled through her memory to find somebody besides the man himself to blame for what had happened.

If only she had realized what he had been doing before it was too late.

If only his parents hadn't been such good-for-nothing _assholes_.

If only Lola hadn't been sick.

If only Jack had never met Peyton Riley.

If only Johnny Sabatino hadn't found him.

If only Louise had stayed longer after the funeral, just a few weeks more, and maybe she would have met him as he stumbled home.

If only, if only, if only.

If only she'd been better. If only he wasn't so sick.

She'd do anything for this to not be true. Anything, God, anything, won't you please listen now, after all this time asking for _nothing_, can't you just do this, just this? Take it back, take it all back, make him whole again.

But God never answered, because God wanted nothing to do with Gotham City, anymore.

**4. Depression**

_[It is] a reaction to practical implications relating to the loss. Sadness and regret predominate this type of depression; [it is] our quiet preparation to separate and to bid our loved one farewell. _

On the tenth day, Louise began to pack.

She packed all of her clothes, every bit of her belongings, back into the boxes she hadn't yet had time to throw out and that sat stacked in her hall closet. She wouldn't take the big furniture. She would leave everything that would slow her down.

This city was too much for her. She got on the phone and bought a one-way airline ticket to Tennessee, where Mollie was already expecting and preparing for her arrival. Louise was already planning on drinking her body weight in Moonshine when she landed, and then purging herself of any last remnant of Jack she possessed.

He was gone, and it was worse than death, because he was _right there_. He was right there, and he was farther from her than he had ever been, and Louise couldn't stand it. She could not stand watching the news and seeing him; she could not stand the thought of seeing him again in person. If he stood in front of her once more, flaunting the body of the boy she'd loved, she would shatter. She'd die even before he had a chance to kill her.

Practical matters filled her thoughts for a day and a half. Airline prices, the cost of luggage, a truck to take all her belongings back to Tennessee, abandoning her lease, quitting her job – these were all on her To-Do list, etched out neatly and orderly on a pad of clear white paper that looked like fresh snow against the dirty grey of her linoleum-cloaked kitchen counter.

It was well-organized and meticulous. The preparations for her departure from Gotham took up all of Louise's time and energy. She did not watch the news. She did not see that, suddenly, the Joker disappeared from the headlines. She did not have time to wonder why that was, or what, exactly, he was doing instead of massacring the public.

Louise was too busy being practical to bother with such things. Wondering about such things was past her, now, and she could not look back.

**5. Acceptance**

_Reaching this stage of mourning is a gift not afforded to everyone. _

On the eleventh day, he came.

* * *

The box Louise was taping up was marked '**Kitchen Stuff**'. As she struggled with the packing tape, she mused idly about how everyone's shit looked exactly the same when they were moving. No matter the contents of the boxes, they were all marked similarly: **Bedroom, Books, Glassware (Careful!), Kid's Stuff, Garage, Bathroom**_**. **_A person's whole life reduced to random, one-or-two word phrases, with an exclamation point thrown in for effect here and there.

Thinking about things like that made it seem worthless to even _try_ to be unique and individual when decorating. But then, maybe it was just Louise's own dour, hopeless outlook on life these days. It was like reliving the month of May about eleven years ago.

Louise's flight was scheduled to leave in three days. She still hadn't quit her job. She wasn't planning on telling her landlord she was leaving. It wasn't like it mattered, after all. People in Gotham up and disappeared or left without warning all the time. She'd get a part time job as a receptionist somewhere doing menial work for nothing, and it'd be paradise. Louise heard tell it was often sunny in Tennessee, even in late-November, early-December. That would be a nice change.

With a loud, sticky screeching sound, the packing tape came un-jammed and Louise slapped it over the box's flaps, securing the cardboard in place. Experimentally she half-lifted the box and, with a grunt of effort, shook it awkwardly side-to-side. There was a quiet rustling, thumping sound from inside, but nothing jangled and, thankfully, there were no sounds of breaking glass. A job well done. She heaved a sigh of relief at having finished one box. There were still so many to do.

"Are you _going_ somewhere?"

His voice hit her like a hammer to the head; she sprawled forward, grasping at the tile on her kitchen floor uselessly with bitten nails. It seemed to take hours for her to take control of her body enough to turn around and find the source of that chilling voice. When she did, she wished she hadn't. She wished a lot of things in that instant, but mostly, she wished she had packed faster.

His makeup was freshly applied. The white paint was smooth, like a sheet, like a mask, and the red was glaring and vicious across his scars. His black eyes resembled pits, horrible bruises, and they seared her. He was furious at having stumbled upon her in the midst of leaving, she knew that. She could practically feel the waves of ire radiating from his person as he looked around at her packing tape, X-Acto knife and black permanent marker scattered across the floor.

Luckily, her voice found her faster, this time.

"I-I'm leaving."

"_Leaving_?"

"I. . . ."

Her voice caught in her throat and her courage failed her. The most Louise could do was nod.

The dark eyes narrowed threateningly and his rounded shoulders slumped forward. When he spoke next it sent chills running through her.

"_Oh_, no, no, no. I don't thin_k_ so."

With careful, calculating steps he advanced towards her; she backed up, sliding on her butt across the dirty floor until her spine hit empty wooden cabinets. When he walked, shoulders slumped forward, neck stretched outwards and taut, he looked like an animal hunting for prey: calculated, deadly, predatory.

"But I should have ex-pec-ted you to bolt."

The Joker – Jack – The Joker crouched directly in front of her, so close she could actually smell him: the dusty, strong scent of ash and damp Gotham streets and gasoline fumes. Her nose wrinkled involuntarily at the sharpness of the mix, and she saw his fiery eyes take in every expression. The downward tilt of his lips, the unsightly pinching and twisting of his paint-smeared scars, sent thrills of terror through her. Her body tensed, waiting.

"It's wha-t you _do_."

The syllables stretched out, taunting, accusatory, bitter, and a sense of indignation flared up in her, borne from those days of Anger and Denial. What he was implying of her character was more offensive than she could express in words. The idea that she would _leave_, that she, with even a _hint_ of Jack's continued existence, would voluntarily and purposefully choose to forsake him . . . it was ludicrous. And he, this murderer, this lunatic, had no right to place this kind of charge on her.

"I left because I thought you were _dead_!" she snapped out viciously, before her timidity could swallow up the words. Immediately after, she clamped her mouth shut and pressed herself harder against the cabinets, hoping to bleed right through the chipped wood.

"Oh, oh, we're telling _tales_ now! You should have let me know, I woulda come prepared with a new _scar_ story."

"I'm not – I'm not lying. Peyton Riley . . ."

His coal-eyes flashed and one arm shot out. The long, spidery, gloved fingers grasped the front of her blouse and pulled her roughly to him: their noses were nearly touching; her legs splayed awkwardly beneath her and the collar of her shirt dug into the back of her neck. At such close proximity, Louise could feel his breath fanning across her face; she sensed every tremor that swept through his body. She was surprised to find that the mention of Peyton Riley's name had elicited some sort of wild, uncontrolled reaction in him. He was _angry_ that she'd said the dead woman's name.

"_What_ were you doing talking to Peyton Riley?" he growled.

She trembled. It took her a moment to speak. She temporarily forgot how to swallow.

"She – she found me. She came to our – to your – apartment. Right after Lola died. Right after . . . She told me . . ."

Louise faltered; the Joker's fingers were clasping wildly at her shirt front, bunching up the fabric so tautly it nearly choked her. A sliver of yellowed teeth flashed between blood red lips as he clenched his jaw. Her knee ached from where he'd dragged her to him over the craggy linoleum.

"What did she tell you?"

Louise swallowed with some difficulty and said, "She told me that Johnny Sabatino killed you and threw your body into the river. She told me you were n-never coming home."

With a grunt of disgust the Joker shoved her backwards. Her head snapped back and hit the sharp edge of a partially open cabinet door: her eyes watered and black spots swam across her vision. For a moment, Louise feared she would pass out. She didn't know why she feared it; it would offer at least a temporary reprieve of this nightmare situation. But she did fear it. She feared that the next time darkness flooded her vision, light would never again bless her eyes.

He was muttering to himself, pacing like a caged animal back and forth around her tiny, cramped little kitchen. With a violent kick he sent her carefully packed box of dishes flying. She heard them break inside as the cardboard square tumbled over and over. She felt like she might vomit from the throbbing pain in her temple. She reached up to feel for blood: nothing.

Foggily, gradually, Louise realized that the Joker was pacing. Pacing, and totally, temporarily, oblivious to her presence. He seemed entirely absorbed in his own manic remembrances and thoughts. It was also at this moment that Louise noticed her X-Acto knife.

What she did next was the kind of action a vacuous, huge-titted blonde in a horror movie might take against a ruthless killer: Louise lurched forward, grabbed her X-Action knife, the blade of which was hardly longer than an inch and flimsy beside, and attacked the Joker with it.

His eyes went wide as she flung her staggering person at him, slashing pointlessly at his chest. With hardly any effort at all he blocked her, slapping her arm aside: the X-Acto knife slid from her fingers and skidded out of sight. In a rush of clarity, Louise suddenly understood the stupidity and seriousness of her action, but too late: with an annoyed snarl, the Joker hurled himself at her. His body hit her like a freight train. The world spun sickeningly around her as her head hit the floor.

Two blinks, and the kitchen came back into focus. She became aware of the Joker's body pressed firmly against her for the second time – or, God, she'd had the Joker's body pressed against her countless times, technically, hadn't she? – and again, she felt unrestrained terror clawing at her throat. This time, as the Joker reached into his overcoat for a knife, Louise remembered how to scream.

She'd never really screamed before, not like she did then. It was a good scream: loud, piercing, entirely shrill and terror-stricken. It was a shame, then, that it was cut so short. The Joker smothered her mouth with his leathery hand.

"Shut _up!_ Shut up!"

She didn't. Pooling every last bit of her meager strength into one concentrated effort, Louise thrashed against him and screamed into his hand. If she was going to die right here, right then, she didn't want to go easy. She didn't want to make it easy for him; she wanted to let him know, let Jack know, that she'd fought him the whole way.

One moment, she was struggling violently against her assailant, his own superior strength continually rebutting her own feeble attempts at freedom; the next, everything seemed to slow. Fed up with her continual struggling and thrashing, the Joker removed his hand from her mouth and grasped both of her slender wrists in his palms. In a single motion he slammed them above her head, pressing her arms to the floor and trapping her there, rendering her unable to move two inches in either direction. With heavy, triumphant breaths, the Joker glared down at her and dared her to make another move, to let the tiniest peep pass her lips. His chest heaved, pulling the green vest he was wearing taut against his form.

He needn't have bothered staring down at her so menacingly, for Louise was struck senseless.

Her body calmed and went lax, the anger and resistance flowing out of her as quickly as it had struck. The ghost of a scream died on her lips.

Nearly eleven years ago Jack Napier had held her hands above her head just like this, almost exactly in this position. Louise had been stretched naked across the bed they shared, trembling head to foot, and she could remember even now gasping hoarsely and begging, _begging_ him, for the love of God, to stop torturing her and fuck her already. It was the first time she'd ever spoken more than a sentence in bed with him, and now, with that same body pressed against her, she could taste the way the first truly filthy words she'd ever said had burnt her tongue.

Then, Jack's eyes had burned with exultant pleasure, and his lips had been smiling as he whispered, "Not yet. I want you to _scream_ for it."

Now, his eyes were burning with an entirely different sort of wildness.

He had noticed the change that had taken place in her; he had read the expression on her face as clearly as if the memory Louise was reliving was playing out on a television right in front of him. His breath came in sharp, strangled, repressed bursts. It sounded as though he was trying very hard not to burst out laughing. Louise felt her body warm all over, her face flame, with mortification.

And then he crushed his hot, fierce lips against hers.


	27. Chapter 27

**A/N: **Right, so here it is. You guys rock, by the way! 400+ reviews! That's incredible, really. I'm thrilled. And, the anonymous reviews seemed to be limited last chapter, which hopefully means the only ones I did receive were from different people. : ) Of course, once again, I don't mean to say anonymous reviewers should not review on my story – just only post one review per chapter. Anyhow, I hope this one is enjoyable. I may write another chapter by January 18th, since I got this one done kinda early. Depends on my inspiration level, though.

Shout out to **M11Curse** just to let you know that I really appreciated your review! Hope you guys all had happy holidays. And, as always, tell me what you think!

* * *

_"We'll be remembered more for what we destroy than what we create."_

~Chuck Palahniuk, _Invisible Monsters_

_

* * *

_

Louise could not have been more surprised if a corpse had kissed her. And, in truth, the puckered skin around the Joker's mouth did give one's nerve endings the impression of wrecked and decaying flesh as it moved against her lips. As the Joker kissed her, Louise felt a great feeling of revulsion blossoming up in the pit of her stomach. And this feeling, the overwhelming sense of being pressed against her dead ex-lover, consumed her. Her lips hardened against his, still and cold as a block of ice, and her eyes pinched closed tightly.

He kissed her still lips fiercely, as dynamic in this act as he was in all other movements. There was no vestige of Jack in that kiss, no shadow of the way he used to kiss, a tantalizingly soft but possessively insistent kiss that claimed ownership and displayed great vulnerability all at once. This kiss, _this _kiss, was a farce. It was a wicked, horrid thing that the Joker inflicted upon her to pain her, to hurt her, to torture her. Louise could feel it, could taste the lie in the greasepaint that coated his mouth, in the harsh nips he took at her own sensitive flesh.

Louise wrenched her head to the side. The Joker's chest heaved once, twice against her own, constricting her breathing. Louise feared the repercussions of turning away from him as she had, so negligently, so carelessly, an obvious and straightforward rebuff. Had she hurt his pride? Had she angered him?

So suddenly it sent a frisson of terror through her body, the Joker burst out into heavy, high peals of laughter. His body shook against her own, scraping the sharp angles of her shoulder blades against the floor. Somehow, this reaction was even more horrifying than an expression of violence. Her breath came short and raspy as the Joker laughed, his rubbery fingertips digging into the soft flesh of her wrists as the peals wracked through his body. Louise commenced squirming beneath him, hoping that in his manic laughter he might neglect to keep her pinned down firmly enough.

This hope was dashed immediately. The minute the Joker noticed her attempting to escape his iron grasp, the laughter choked to an abrupt stop. He pressed the backs of her hands so hard against her floor she feared he would break her hand. A soft cry escaped her lips as she felt the delicate bones of her fingers bend against the great pressure pushing against them.

"I'm . . . I'm so _confused_, Louise," the Joker mock-confessed, his face a mask of feigned guilelessness. "I thought kissing was what you _wan_ted. Did I misread the _signs_? Did I just, uh, pre-tend to see you taking stranger after stranger home to, ahem, '_cure the loneliness_'?"

"I only –" Louise began, incensed once again.

"Tut tut! No more excuses, hmm? Let's . . . keep it real. D'ya think you can do that? Before we move _on_, I'd like to ask a few questions." His eyes widened meaningfully; the pale pink of his tongue shot out to trace his boldly painted lips. "You're a religious girl, if I re-mem-ber. So let's pretend you've got your hand on the Good Book, and if you lie . . . Well, Louise, if you _lie_, you'll get to see Hell up close and personal. Would'ja like to meet Hell? I have Him right here in my pocket, next to my disemboweling knife."

One purple hand lifted up to pat the front of his overcoat. Muffled noises, like those of instruments of some sort knocking together, almost set Louise off screaming again.

"Let's lay down a couple _ground_ rules, shall we?"

The dark eyes rolled upwards and examined the cracked-and-water-spotted ceiling. He thought for a half a second and then said, "Rule one: _NO _screaming."

His blackly painted brows rose suggestively, and his chin jutted downwards towards the pocket containing the aforementioned "Hell". Her scream caught in her throat.

"Rule two: You are going to answer e-ver-y single question I ask you. Or _else_."

His voice lowered dramatically, several octaves, until, with a thrill of something that wasn't the terror she was becoming familiar with, she realized she could recognize Jack's voice in those deep tones.

The resemblance was gone as he spoke next.

"Let's see if you can _handle_ those. Are you ready?"

In response, Louise shivered underneath of him.

The questions proceeded without any more unnecessary ado:

"Where did you go after you disappeared?"

"Metropolis," said Louise hurriedly. "I grew up there and I felt that it was –"

"Hey, hey, this isn't your autobi_ography_ here. Keep it short."

The corner of the Joker's mouth twitched, as if he was amused, and yet Louise felt this common facial contortion was something sinister and threatening. Her muscles tensed and twitched nervously, and her breath came short.

"Where did you get the kind of cash for that?" This question held a twinge of accusation, and dark eyes glowered down at her with a look she'd seen before. He was essentially asking her if she'd become a prostitute, as she had so often offered when Lola was sick.

"Peyton Riley gave me a hundred grand," Louise retorted defensively, jutting her chin out in an expression of defiance. His only response was a sharp, high yelp of laughter and a quick roll of his eyes.

Feeling slightly more at ease now that the Joker had, for the moment, relaxed his iron hold on her, Louise allowed herself to take a few deep breaths to calm her nerves. The man did not seem to have it in his mind to kill her immediately, nor did it seem like he was done, or even close to being done, asking questions. What would happen once he got to twenty, Louise wasn't sure. She only knew that for an instant were going as smoothly as one could hope, given the circumstances.

"How many men have you been with?"

The feeling of temporary safety she'd just experienced shattered like finely spun glass in a hailstorm. Her stricken visage elicited a low chuckle from the Joker, a throaty, virulent sound that expressed pleasure in her discomfort.

"Did you think these would be _easy_? Oh, Louise, Louise . . . you oughta know by now that _nothing_ in this life is ever _easy_."

No, Louise reflected bitterly. She _did_ know that by now – the man sitting astride her had taught that lesson to her over a decade ago, when he'd disappeared from her life as quickly as he'd shown up in it. For a moment, Louise pictured Jack as he was that first day – bathed in sunlight, rubbing his bruised and beaten face. And now . . . now . . .

No, life wasn't easy. Life was agonizing.

He was staring down at her expectantly, like a ticking bomb ready to explode in her face if she didn't respond fast enough. She hurried to count the men in her head, dreading speaking the answer aloud more with every end-of-the-year count she tallied.

"F-fifty, maybe."

"_Fifty_?"

His voice was low again, the ghost of Jack's angry tremble thronging somewhere deep in his throat. The fingers gripping her hands tightened again, but this time their pressure did not abate: it grew and grew, pushing her fingers backwards, until she squirmed beneath him; until she opened her mouth to scream and remembered, just in time, the Joker's first rule.

Instead she gasped out desperately, "Please, please! You're going to break my hands!"

"_Good,_" the Joker snarled down at her. "Maybe if I crush them you won't be able to shove them down every stranger's pants that you meet!"

He squeezed her right hand brutally and, like a mini-gunshot, she heard one finger snap. Louise didn't know which one it was; the pain spread out throughout her entire arm, epicenter indistinguishable. Tears stung her eyes, and she bit her tongue until it bled to keep from screaming.

One finger didn't satisfy him: the merciless squeezing continued until she felt yet another finger bend to its breaking point – literally.

"I only slept with the ones that looked like you!" Louise choked out, her head swimming as yet another finger gave under the weight of his hands. She cried out anything, any thought, any excuse, that might make him stop. "I t-thought of you every time, every time they –"

"_What_ a sen-ti-ment!" the Joker cut her off, his voice high and wild. The look in his eyes seemed harried; she felt the arms pressing her back tremble. For just a moment, through the hazy fog of pain and terror, she thought that perhaps he couldn't stand hearing her say the actual words.

"You were dead," she continued despairingly. "I buried you, God, I . . . I put all your things in a coffin and then I lowered it into the ground. Jack . . . Jack, please . . ."

At the mention of his name the Joker's eyes narrowed and darkened. A muscle in his jaw twitched spasmodically and his teeth ground together; Louise thought she could almost hear the slow dragging of enamel against enamel. She recognized her mistake immediately – the name, that name she hadn't yet faced ascribing to him in person and hardly in her own mind, had infuriated him more than anything she had done yet.

"_Don't . . . call . . . me . . . _that_._"

Another finger gave way, so easily Louise almost couldn't believe how breakable her own body was proving to be. She'd never broken a major bone in her life. A few toes, a fractured wrist when she was thirteen, sure . . . but nothing like this, not this premeditated infliction of pain. It didn't matter that they were only her fingers, or that she knew he had so much more in store for her, now. Louise may have grown up in a broken home, may have experienced horrid things that no young girl ought to, may have felt more emotional agony than most, but she'd been, at least, physically safe. Her mother had never beaten her, and, besides a slap or two here and there when Louise gave lip, she'd never physically mistreated Louise. And Jack . . . Jack, though his eyes had often carried a threat, would never have hurt her as he was doing now. He was, in fact, the reason why she'd stayed as untouched as she had while living in the Narrows.

Louise had never experienced pain like this, in body or in spirit.

Finally, mercifully, he released her. Her fingers throbbed, sending jolts of pain up her wrists and into her shoulders. Though her arms were free, Louise didn't attempt to move – she felt exhausted, though she had scarcely moved. Even her breath was coming heavy.

And then, just as she thanked whatever higher power there may be for finally making him release her, he reached for Hell.

She recognized the intent immediately; she didn't need the wild look in his eyes to tell her what he was planning.

"I answered your questions, I did e-everything. I followed the rules. You can't . . . !"

"Oh, I _can_," he assured her. "Ya see . . . I'm not one to follow the rules . . . even my own."

From inside of his overcoat he retrieved an instrument that resembled a medieval corkscrew. Louise looked at it in horror and confusion, unsure as to just what he was planning to do with that thing, whatever it was. The end was metal, teethed, and circular, with a sharp point glinting in the middle.

"What is that?" Louise breathed tremulously. "What _is _that?"

"It's a trephine," the Joker said. Louise looked up at the device with the same level of confusion; the Joker rolled his blackened eyes. "It's an, ah, old-fashioned surgical device. The end here," he pointed to the jagged metal circle, "is used to hold it in place as I twist the handle _here_." His fingers twisted the wooden handle deftly in demonstration.

To Louise's horror, the metal rod in the center of the circle descended, emerging from its metal sheath. It was, she realized, some sort of horrible, hand-held drill.

Peripherally, as though a beam from heaven had suddenly illuminated it in her time of need, Louise spotted her X-Acto knife. It was hardly any help at all, but it was _something_ – something that could slow the progress of that horrendous looking torture device. Something to keep it from boring into her skull, or her stomach, or her eyeballs. As the Joker twisted the device back into position, readying it, Louise used all of her remaining strength to lurch for her weapon.

Her battered, broken fingers clutched around the knife as well as they could, and Louise clenched her teeth through the pain. With all of her strength, before the Joker could comprehend that she was not just trying to squirm away but actually trying to acquire something with which to attack him, Louise gripped the knife and turned on him.

The Joker was just reaching out to grab her with his free hand. Louise swung the knife past his arm in a wide arc; it pierced through the thick fabric of his pants and then, just when she feared it hadn't enough blade to even reach skin, it made a long, fraction of an inch cut down the side of one thigh.

She felt the skin tear against the knife in a sickening line. The Joker reached behind him in a fury of annoyance – that he wasn't even in a great state of pain didn't surprise Louise in the least – and wrenched the item from her hand. The tip of the feeble blade was tinged scarlet, and for the briefest of seconds Louise felt queasy. She'd stabbed Jack. With a tiny blade, no doubt, but she had stabbed him. She'd drawn his blood.

She'd momentarily distracted him.

Her arm swung out and knocked the drill from the Joker's right hand as he was tossing the X-Acto knife away with his left. The device skidded across her kitchen floor and came to rest somewhere underneath the dusty confines of her dishwasher. The Joker growled in supreme vexation and went for her throat, but Louise was already gone, scrambling out from underneath of him and lurching for her front door. What she thought getting out into the hallway would do, she didn't know. It wasn't as if the Joker particularly cared if he killed her in broad daylight, in front of the seventy-or-so-year-old woman who lived across the hall from her and spied on neighbors as they came in and out with their groceries. Having an audience would probably even please him. Still, Louise knew that 'out' was the only option, because in being 'in', she was most definitely trapped.

He caught her by her ankles and she went crashing down. Her hands flew up just in time to spare her nose from hitting the floor and breaking, but not in time to save her ribs from taking a throttling from her hardwood floor. The breath flew out of her in one great _whoosh_; Louise wheezed uncomfortably.

"That drill cost me a _fortune_," the Joker said from behind her. His spidery fingers inched their way up the underside of her calves, skittered over the hollow of her knee, and came to rest, almost tenderly, on her upper thighs. The fingertips stroked jagged shapes across her denim-cloaked skin. "And _you're_ going to pay for it."

Face mashed against the floor, one of the Joker's hands pressing firmly against her spine and holding her down, Louise knew she was helpless. This was it. It was over. Whatever he was going to do – violate her, torture her, murder her – was coming, and she couldn't stop it. She was exhausted, at least four of her fingers were broken, and her ribs ached. Moreover . . . Moreover, Louise was simply nearing the end of how much she could endure emotionally. Discovering that Jack was alive after all these years, that he was a murderer, and that he desperately wanted to inflict pain upon her was all too much. Louise almost didn't have it in her to _want_ to fight, anymore.

"Don't," she murmured thickly through her unnaturally contorted lips. It was all the resistance she could summon.

He laughed, and replied, "But th_a_t wouldn't be fair. A, uh, _thigh_ for a _thigh_."

The hand stroking her thigh was removed and then, seconds later, Louise experienced the absolute worst pain of her entire life.

The fingers, the ribs, the knocks on the head, the way that explosion had thrown her backwards – it was all nothing, _nothing_, compared to this. The pain was so extreme, so intense, so blinding, that Louise couldn't even fathom what might be causing it, at first. She could hear herself screaming, almost from a great distance, like she was removed from her body and was listening in on the scene from somewhere very far away. Her shrieks sounded unholy, things that, abstractly, she couldn't believe were coming from her mouth. She thrashed against the floor, scrambled to pull away, scraped her fingertips bloody as she dug into her floorboards and attempted to claw out of the Joker's hold. Nothing helped. He held her firm, and continued on with his torture.

Eventually, she became aware of the source of the pain – he was carving into her with a knife, a _knife_, like a turkey on Thanksgiving – in one straight, horizontal line on the back of her thigh. Briefly, the Joker ceased, and the tip of the blade was removed from her flesh. Her heart thudded in her throat; she felt tears slipping down her face and pooling in little puddles on her floor. She thought it might be over. It wasn't. He resumed with just as much force, this time slicing vertically downwards. Her eyes lit up, danced with searing light. Louise sobbed and prayed and screamed his name, Jack's name, begging him to stop. He didn't, not until he had cut inches into her flesh, ending his carving with one sickening flick of his wrist, a curving flourish.

Her body stilled as he pulled the knife away, seemingly for the last time. She sobbed brokenly against the floor, great, wracking sobs that were animalistic in their rawness. Every nerve ending she possessed seemed to be searing with pain.

Louise could feel the sticky blood soaking into her denim jeans and spreading, like the slow, warm, revolting seep of urine, down her leg. The Joker was panting; Louise heard him moving around, one knee brushing her good thigh. He hadn't laughed as he carved her. He didn't laugh now, in the aftermath. For that, Louise supposed she was thankful.

His fingers reached out and entangled themselves in her dark curls. She feared that he was going to pull her upright by her hair, but, with that same tenderness she'd felt as he stroked her thigh before stabbing into her, he brushed the tresses away from the nape of her neck. When he touched her skin next, a great shiver passed through her.

He'd taken his glove off, and the abnormally soft tips of his fingers rested gently against the top of her spine. The slender length of his pinky stroked up and down her jugular vein as it throbbed.

"There," he said, and his voice was Jack's once more. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

Louise could not speak to answer. The floorboards creaked beneath of his weight as the Joker stood. Through her tears she watched the worn brown shoes tread across her floor and go towards the window. There was nothing left in her to turn over, or to question where he was going, or if he'd be back, or why, once again, he wasn't finishing her off. By straining her eyes where she lay, Louise was able to discern the Joker cloaking himself in a puffy black overcoat and wide brimmed hat.

He passed by her once more before he left – by the door, this time, as he was adequately disguised to escape most's notice in the early-December gale. Neither said a word.

* * *

It was at least an hour, maybe two, before Louise was composed enough to move. She couldn't walk, but by using a mixture of crawling and pulling herself across the floor by her forearms she was able to drag herself into the bathroom. It took longer still, a ridiculously long amount of time, to struggle out of her jeans. They were soaked with blood, clinging to her torn skin. When she pulled them down around her ankles it felt like she was flaying herself in the process.

Louise should have called 9-1-1. This cut, her fingers, everything that had happened to her – it all warranted an ambulance ride and a written statement to the police. But even as she struggled to clean her own wound with the peroxide from her medicine cabinet, Louise knew the hospital wasn't an option. And she knew the Joker knew it, too. How could she go the police, now? Doubtlessly, they would believe her story when they saw the wound he'd inflicted on her, in a place she herself could scarcely reach.

He'd marked her with his first initial, a bloody, torn 'J' that leaked crimson and would tell any man who took off her pants who she truly belonged to.

So yes, they would believe her now. Too late, they would believe her. But where, exactly, would that get her? They would want a connection, a reason he was targeting her, information on his whereabouts, and his plans for her – the first two of which were unspeakable, and the last two of which she hardly knew. It would be a tiring, emotionally trying experience, and Louise knew she couldn't go through it. She knew, also, that it would hardly help – what would they do, even if they were to know his name? His age? His mother's former occupation? Louise could write them a book on the man the Joker had been, the boy she had loved, and yet it wouldn't do a bit of good. He was _not_ Jack Napier, anymore. He had his body, and a very few of his memories, and his features, but he was not Jack. The Joker was a monster that walked and talked and breathed like the boy she'd held in her arms a long, long time ago, but he was _not_ him.

She wouldn't taint Jack's name with the Joker's, for they were not the same person.

Where that left her, Louise wasn't sure. She reflected on this grimly as she wrapped her wound in layer upon layer of gauze. The cut was not as deep as it had felt when the Joker was in the midst of carving it into her, but it was more than deep enough to warrant stitches. Louise couldn't stitch herself up, and as she'd already decided the hospital was out of the question she resigned herself to an ugly scar – just as the Joker expected her to do. The risk for infection was high, but she figured there just wasn't much she could do about that.

Laboriously, Louise crawled-slashed-pulled herself into her bedroom. She had already packed most of her clothing into boxes that she'd loaded into the moving van she'd rented. A driver was supposed to come bright and early to take the truck down to Tennessee, where Mollie would greet her, and they would greet her things together. Louise knew now that it would never happen.

With a weary sigh, Louise pulled herself onto her bed, bare of sheets, and curled in on herself to keep warm. She was clad in nothing below the waist but a pair of scanty cotton panties and a wrap of gauze on one leg, but she hadn't the strength or will to find something to cover up with.

Cradling her bruised, awkwardly bent fingers to her chest, Louise sobbed herself to sleep.

* * *

She was feverish when she awoke. Heavy footsteps trod noisily through her apartment. Louise knew it was the Joker, back again, before she was even awake enough to process her surroundings. Clanging came from the kitchen; she heard him mumbling and scuffling around. Presumably, he was on his hands and knees trying to retrieve his torture device from underneath the dishwasher.

The clock read nine o'clock at night, the next night. It had been afternoon when he'd been here last, and a little more than a day had passed since then. She'd slept through most of the blissful hours that he was absent, and now, all at once, he was back again. It would be a miracle if Louise survived yet another encounter with somebody so set on hurting and killing her.

More terrifying than this thought was the realization that any minute he'd be coming to look for her – and she was laying, splayed out, half naked from the waist down, on her bed.

She slipped from her bed onto the floor and crawled over to a solitary brown suitcase that lay open. It held all of her necessary items, like a few changes of clothes and her toiletries. Sifting through the dark soup of clothing, Louise pulled out a pair of loose jeans and struggled to slip them on. They were tight, and her left leg was stiff, sore, and swollen. It was difficult and painful to pull the jeans on, and Louise was dismayed and panicked to find that as soon as they reached her knees, it became exceedingly painful – almost too painful – for her to pull them on herself, especially lying helpless on the floor as she was.

The Joker's steps were coming closer, clomping down the narrow expanse of hallway to her room. No doubt he expected her to be sleeping again, and to give her yet another unwelcome surprise. Louise doubled her efforts to pull the article of clothing on, lifting her hips in the air with a grimace and tugging with all her might, her broken fingers throbbing from the tight grip. Her back slid against the floor, and despite how hard she tried to hold herself up, her legs began to shake violently, and then gave way beneath her.

The slam of the door as the Joker entered her room drowned out the sound of her body hitting the ground. With flaming cheeks, Louise watched as he surveyed her, pathetic and broken on the floor, unable to even dress herself. That he had found her in such a demeaning position tore at whatever sense of dignity she had left. Louise expected him to laugh at her, mock her, or even reach out and do her physical harm. She waited for this, readied herself, even tried to think of something biting to retort.

He did none of these things. The expression on his face was inscrutable, his eyes fathomless. The makeup was smeared; lines that had once been clear and defined were smudged, blending red into white and white into black. His hair was mussed, tangled, and appeared to be somewhat oily – it was obvious he'd been busy the past day, though Louise had no wish to know what he'd been doing.

Finally, he approached her. She turned her face away from his as he bent down and hooked his arms around her waist, though she didn't attempt to struggle against him. He looped one arm around her sore ribs, holding her upright against him, back pressed against his hard chest. The knot of his tie dug into her neck, and she realized woozily that he didn't have his jacket on. The lean muscles in his arms flexed as he held her up, muscles she hadn't seen but remembered by the mere shape of them beneath of his button-down, and the way they felt holding her so close. The smell of him overwhelmed her – gritty, like ash; coppery, like blood; and pungent, like gasoline fumes. She smelled quite clearly that he'd been busy.

He'd donned his gloves once again, but that didn't make Louise any less light-headed when his hand brushed down her naked thigh; her breath came sharp and painful and her heart thrummed against her chest. Wildly, Louise contemplated the full consequences of her being half-undressed in front of the Joker. Strangely, the possibilities that sprang to her mind were nowhere near as horrifying as she figured they should be.

It was clear in the next moment, however, that he did not intend to do any of the things Louise had just visualized: Instead, the Joker hooked his free hand around the waistband of her jeans and began, in little tugs, to dress her.

She was so stunned by this that she didn't even fidget as he slid them upwards over her bandaged thigh. He did so with surprising gentleness, and then continued onwards in a simple yet slow drag over her hips. In the process, his fingertips brushed the swell of her bottom; her whole body twitched as she felt him touch her and a sharp gasp escaped her throat. He didn't respond to this reaction whatsoever. He reached around her body, fingers flickering over her stomach as he reached for her buttons. His breath was hot on her neck and coming shallowly; she wanted desperately to push his hands away as his fingers flicked over button and zipper, but found herself too spellbound to do so. He finished dressing her, palm coming to rest flat against her pelvis.

"Don't touch me," Louise finally whispered, her voice gravelly and loud in the stillness.

He acquiesced immediately, throwing her against her bed, gentleness gone. When she turned to look at him, his face was as stoic as when he first entered the room. His visage hadn't changed one bit by the scene they'd just played out, though Louise felt shaken to her core by it.

"What do you want with me?" she asked.

He clucked his tongue against the inside of his cheek and replied, "I'm . . . not sure."

"Are you going to kill me?"

"_Oh_, I think so."

"Then why haven't you done it yet? Why are you drawing it out?" Anxiety and desperation rose in her voice, making it quaver. She swallowed before she continued. "Why don't you just get it over with?"

"Because . . ." he began, his voice barely more than a rasp, "You're the ace up my sleeve."

Louise sat on the edge of her bed, broken fingers gripping the mattress as she tried desperately to decode that cryptic statement. He kicked her suitcase out of the way to stand in front of her, her legs stretched out long and his on either side of them. His hands reached out and cupped her face, tilting her chin upwards. He slanted his lips across hers: softly but insistently, and with a twist of possession that no other man had a right to include in his kiss. The taste of him was strong, less of greasepaint this time and more of his own sinful flavor. Louise felt herself melt into it despite her misgivings – there, in the dark, with shadows flicking across his face and his kiss so familiar, he was Jack.

Her heart broke as he kissed her, and she knew he tasted her tears.


	28. Chapter 28

**A/N:** All right, so this chapter is branching out a little bit. You'll notice I've included yet another DC character, and though he won't play a MAJOR part in the story he will be in the background at times. Sort of like a catalyst for the plot, if you will. I'll try to stay as true to the actual character as possible, keeping the alterations relatively small.

You'll also notice after reading this chapter that it introduces two familiar faces. I want you to pay special attention to the last line of the chapter, because it's essential that the readers don't fall under the impression that this is going to be like every other Joker/OC story. There aren't any love triangles in this story – only hate-triangles and lust-triangles as far as the eye can see.

Do you like it? Please, let me know. I'm feeling rather down so some nice reviews might cheer me up considerably. : )

* * *

_"Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top."_

_~ Virginia Woolf_

* * *

"You're such a ba-by," he growled, lips popping on the second 'b', teeth bared.

He held her hands, bruised fingers stretched outwards to the point of extreme discomfort. He had acquired tiny finger splints of steel, foam, and velcro and was applying them to her afflicted digits.

"You broke my fingers!"

"I _sprained_ them. Except this one. And . . . maybe this one."

"I'll do this myself, I don't want you touching me, I don't –"

"If you don't quit your _ya_pping, I'm going to sew that mouth of yours _shut_."

He glared up at her under heavily painted lids, the barest glint of his teeth showing beneath of his curled upper lip. Louise knew she was antagonizing him, but the fact that the Joker was mending the wounds he himself had inflicted upon her . . . well, it was too much. She could hardly breathe without sending shockwaves of agony through her whole body, sitting as she was. Even the baggy pair of boxer shorts she had on were chaffing against her bandaged wound, like sandpaper against cement.

Tensions were running high on both sides, and to make things infinitely more confusing, Louise had no idea _why_ he was doing this – fixing her up, making sure she didn't walk around with gnarled fingers for the rest of her life. The contrast between the murdering psychopath who held her down and sliced through her flesh with knives and the man who helped her dress and bandaged her hands was bewildering. So bewildering, in fact, that Louise was hardly more at ease with the second man than the first.

"Why are you helping me?" she asked for the first time. He didn't look up at her, only examined her middle finger, which he had speculated to be the broken one.

"I have to have you look_ing_ your best," he replied finally.

"For wha—"

With a quick flick of his wrist the Joker snapped her middle finger again. Louise howled with pain and pitched forward, bashing her forehead into the Joker's sharp shoulder. The pain washing through her hand and clouding her mind was severe: she didn't even care that she continued to rest her face on the Joker's jacket as he continued working on the finger he'd just broken – again.

"I was right," he expounded as Louise whimpered and sobbed into his overcoat. "This one _was_ broken."

"S-So you do it _again_," she rasped, angrily, into his neck.

"It wasn't going to heal right," he said. The tightness in his voice displayed clear annoyance at her weakness – no doubt he would be able to withstand a few broken fingers with barely more than a wince, and far more gracefully than she was.

But then, after those scars adorning his cheeks, a few broken fingers must be nothing.

It wasn't the first time Louise felt a deep, aching pity for Jack, for the vestiges of the pain he had experienced that scarred his body. Through her mourning period, after the initial shock, she had spent days upon days just _thinking_ of what it must have been like . . . To have your cheeks, those thin, almost delicate walls of flesh, ripped open, left torn and flapping, exposing the dark caverns of your mouth. . . God, it would be agony.

And it didn't end there. The healing process had to be a hell of its very own. Louise had never had reason to think of the great role facial muscles have in everyday life before seeing Jack's injuries up close. Talking, of course, she expected to have been an incredibly trying ordeal after being cut as he was. But not only that . . . every little alteration of expression employed the cheek muscles, the muscles of the jaw, the lips . . . To smile, to yawn, to frown, to cry; to swallow or lick your lips or glower up at her as he had just been doing – it had to have been a torment for him to do the simplest things, things that he wouldn't even think to stop doing before it was too late and his entire mind was exploding with the pain of one little sneeze.

Louise pitied him it so deeply sometimes that it was hard to even hate him for the things he'd done.

Hard, but not impossible. Because no matter what he'd gone through to make him the way he was, Louise still despised the Joker.

The problem was, Louise couldn't quite decide whether or not he was completely the Joker – or whether Jack existed somewhere far, far beneath the surface, a slave to the insanity that possessed his mind. Jack would never consider touching her with a threatening hand, as the Joker had done time and time again without the barest hint of remorse. And yet, the Joker certainly didn't seem like the type to stick around and help her pull her pants up when she could not, or mend her damaged hands.

So, the question remained, present and stifling in her breast: Was there any chance – any at all – of redemption for this man? Or was Jack truly as dead as she had believed him to be?

It was hard to think of the answer to the first question being 'yes', for he still killed with impunity and enjoyed doing it. And yet, to say without question that 'no, Jack is dead, this man is nothing but evil' was, perhaps, beyond Louise's abilities, despite all of her good intentions.

"I wouldn't tell anyone, you know," she murmured, lifting her head from his shoulder and pushing her tear-soaked tresses away from her eyes with the heel of her hands. "About you. Who you are. . . What happened to you."

The Joker appeared amused by this confession.

"You think that's why I'm doing this to you? Be-_cause_ . . . . I'm _shy_? Don't want big, bad Batsy to know my _name_? I would trade tha_t_ for his in a second, not like he'd offer . . ." The Joker clucked impatiently, cracking his knuckles one-by-one. Louise flinched at each finger and felt immediately ashamed for doing so. "Listen, listen . . . I was set on killing you. You know that."

Louise shivered and nodded.

"But see . . . I realized, suddenly, that you could be so much more _use_ful to me if I kept you around. And killing you," he waved his hand in the air, as if brushing away the foolish concept, "would just be a, ah, worthless ges_ture_. I wanted to kill you because my old self, my past self, recognized you. And, sweetie, it was big surprise to find that it _hurt_. I didn'_t_ like it. Killing you would be easy. But keeping you around . . . might just be disastrous. And as you know. . . I kinda _like_ disasters."

The Joker stood, his doctoring finally complete. The knees of his purple slacks were covered in white-grey dust; he patted at them until their original, deep plum color returned. Louise rested her stiff hands in her lap, the mini-splints bulky and uncomfortable, and watched him, her mind muddled and disturbed by his words.

"Disastrous for whom, exactly?" Louise asked.

The Joker straightened up and spread his arms wide, smiling broadly.

"Everyone."

* * *

"It hurts, doesn't it?"

They are standing in a place Louise has never seen before, someplace lush with overgrown vegetation. This place is far, far away from the Narrows. Louise feels lost and out of place, but the blonde girl looks completely at her leisure. She strolls through the greenery with her hands clasped behind her back – Louise notes dainty, delicate wrists and slender, pale arms. The girl looks as fragile and graceful as a porcelain ballerina.

She has her back turned, as always, but Louise hears the ache in her voice when she speaks.

"Yes. He . . . my hands . . ."

Louise stretches her fingers out in front of her and flexes, only to find that they are as whole and perfectly functioning as they ever were. Even the back of her leg has stopped throbbing, and the migraine she has nursed for the past three days is gone.

"You should have left," the girl says again, mournfully this time.

"I know," Louise concedes quietly.

"It's not too late. There's still time, still someone who can help you. You know who he is, don't you, Louise? You know who he is."

"I . . I don't. There isn't anyone in the city who can. The police –"

The blonde shakes her head, the curls bobbing, catching the light. Suddenly, she begins to run.

Louise doesn't want to follow the girl, but the overwhelming urge to do so compels her, and she darts clumsily after the flitting little form.

They rush through vegetation, getting denser and wilder by the second. Louise lumbers along, out of her element, like an ox charging through rubble. The girl she follows seems to float atop the ground, seems almost to fly.

Finally, just as the vines grow so thick that they are pulling at Louise's limbs, slapping her face, catching around her throat, she falls face-first into clear space.

She looks up. The room she has fallen into is absent of any sort of lushness – it is streamlined, metallic, with glass windows that stretch from ceiling to floor and show the expanse of the Gotham skyline. It is the conference room at her workplace, absent of people.

The girl throws herself into a high-backed swivel chair and spins, legs flailing outwards, tinkling laughter brushing at the edges of Louise's memory, blonde hair whipping around her face and cloaking her features even as Louise tries desperately to know . . .

The girl throws her feet down and stops the chair, high leather back towards Louise.

"Rest assured, gentlemen, that my business remains as secure as ever."

Louise hoists herself to her feet, staring at the back of the chair in bewilderment.

"W-What?" Louise stammers.

"Rest assured, gentlemen," the girl says again, her voice firmer this time, "that my business remains as secure as ever."

"I don't understand, what are you trying to say? What are you trying to –"

Abruptly, she wakes, her alarm clock screaming shrilly into her ear.

* * *

For a long time, Louise stood in the shower and let the steam seep into her skin and settle into her lungs. It would be so, so easy if she stayed home, curled in on herself, and ignored reality; if she waited until the Joker came to her next, perhaps this time to finish her off. It would be so, so easy.

But she couldn't do that, because Louise was flat broke.

In truth, Louise was worse than broke. She was at least five hundred dollars in the red. There was no money left in her bank account, the bills were piling up on the counter with red-inked circles scribbled around the totals to inform her she had yet to make a payment, and her electricity was shut off. She'd spent the entire day prior finishing off the perishables in her refrigerator, hoping that the sustenance would last her a few days if she packed her stomach full. Even her landlord had sent her a letter, informing her she had seven days to pay her rent or she would be evicted.

Living in Gotham was not desirable to her, but living on the streets of Gotham was even less so.

So, Louise could not stand forever in her shower, where the water drowned out the world beyond her flowered shower curtain. Louise had to go to work.

By law, Dubois & Co. could not fire her, though she knew they wished to. It was damn inconvenient that the translator they'd just hired would be incapacitated little more than a month or so into the job – taking their main secretary with her, no less. Still, they didn't fire her. They didn't pay her while she was "recovering" from the explosion she'd witnessed, either, but she supposed that was too much to ask. Her recovery time was up, and she was expected back. If she didn't go now, they could and would fire her.

Necessity required that Louise resume her post at the company, though the idea of such a thing was abhorrent to her. To sit in that conference room, the disagreeable Monsieur Dubois hollering French through the intercom, and pretend that _nothing_ had happened to her . . . that the Joker hadn't invaded her home, that she wasn't wearing the proof it on the back of her thigh, under her fashionable little pencil skirt . . .

And those people, surrounding her, so safe and secure in their business suits and Volvos . . . It would be suffocating to stand amongst them, knowing the entire time that she might tell them, might unburden herself, might pull one of the women into the restroom and show her the 'J' the Joker had carved into her. It would be such a relief to give some of her terror away, disperse it in the crowd, let some _others_ speculate and worry and cringe from the thought of the Joker pinning her down. And some might shy from her, shun her, from the association, in their fear . . . but others, they would take her into their arms and lead her away, offer suggestions she knew would never work but would be nice to hear.

It would be such a relief to let somebody know.

She turned the water off and stepped from the shower, toweling her body dry. She dabbed gingerly around her cut, and then began the lengthy process of tending to and dressing her wound. Days had passed since the Joker had cut her, but the cut had scarcely scabbed. Around the edges she could feel the skin thickening, the blood clotting up to stem the blood flow, but the center was still raw and gaping, leaking blood on occasion. It was coming along, but slowly, and each time she went to redress it she was reminded of what a horrible scar it would be.

It would be such a relief to let somebody know about it, but she couldn't. She could never, ever let anybody know. For, if they knew . . . if they knew she had known him, if they knew she had loved him, what would they say? How would they look at her? If they knew that, once a long time ago, she had slept with him, again and again until they were both drained of strength? If they knew she had let him tilt her lips to his and kiss her just the other day. If they knew the way she thought of him, sometimes. That when he knelt in front of her and one long finger stroked across her palm as he applied splints to her fingers, she wished he would kiss her again . . .

They could never know.

* * *

"It's good to have you back, Louise."

More people were approaching her now than at any other time as an employee at Dubois & Co. No doubt they wanted some gritty details about what had happened during the explosion; what were the particulars of Sara's untimely death. Louise didn't encourage this, however, and eventually every person who attempted to strike up a conversation with her grew bored and listless, and wandered away.

"Mmm," Louise replied, taking a large sip of her coffee and repositioning her legs. Her wound was throbbing uncomfortably beneath her – it had been a long time since she'd sat in a rigid chair like this.

The man who was talking to her now was a complete stranger to her – she was certain she'd never laid eyes on him, even during the obligatory introduction-phase of her first day.

"I mean, I know that getting back into the flow of things will be hard, but it's good that you're pushing – pushing forward." The man ran a hand through his closely-cut, J-Crew hairstyle.

They were both silent for a while, Louise reading over the schedule for today – a very important meeting with Bruce Wayne to reassess Dubois & Co.'s involvement in Wayne Enterprises. This meeting, no doubt, was the reason they'd demanded her back – the translator they'd called in to replace her had a tendency to break into tears after a minute or two of Monsieur Dubois's verbal abuse.

"Sara was . . . She and I . . ." The man spoke again. Louise looked up, startled. She'd almost managed to forget he was still in the room. His voice was strained, now, holding the kind of repressed ache that Louise knew all too well. He had loved tiny Sara Burton, and now she was dead. "Did she mention me? Before . . ."

Overcome by empathy for this stranger, Louise fumbled for something comforting she could say. Sara's death was so violent, so _wrong_, however, that nothing particularly soothing came to mind.

"There wasn't . . . there wasn't really time, you know? It happened so fast, so suddenly."

The man's eyes – a nice shade of blue – darted downwards to stare at the ugly eggplant-colored carpet in Louise's office. "Of course, I mean . . . I heard that it was unexpected."

Unexpected didn't quite cover it, Louise thought, but she didn't say so aloud. Looking at this poor, lovelorn man, Louise felt disgusted in herself. Just days ago she had allowed his love's killer to press his lips to hers. She had let the Joker mend her, spoke to him almost calmly.

Louise pitied this man. If there was anybody who understood having the person they adored ripped from them, it was her.

"I'm so sorry," she said. The man gazed at her intently, and then nodded once.

"You know, I think you're the only person who has really meant it when they said that."

Just then, a little man in a business suit stuck his head in and barked, "Five minutes," before hurrying away. Louise sighed. The man nodded his head at her, lingered for a moment near her doorway, and then disappeared into the jungle of cubicles just outside of her office.

Gathering up all her necessary items, Louise made her way to the conference room. Many representatives from Wayne Enterprises were already present, including an older black man that she thought she'd seen on the local News, once or twice. For the life of her, she couldn't remember his name.

She sat down in her usual seat and arranged her papers, placing the agenda on top to better follow the flow of the conversation. As far as she knew, something had happened within Wayne Enterprises that gave Monsieur Dubois cause to worry about the stability of the company. And, since Dubois & Co. had more than a substantial share in Wayne Enterprise stock, a reevaluation of their business partnership had to be conducted. Louise didn't know what had happened, but she knew how unforgiving Monsieur Dubois could be. She thought that things might not go so well for Wayne Enterprises, today.

After a minute or so, the conference room was almost full. She recognized familiar faces from her company and at least five that she had never seen before, all who looked somber and dressed impeccably – Wayne Enterprise drones. Bruce Wayne himself had yet to appear, though scheduled definitively to attend the meeting.

Louise had never felt very fondly towards Bruce Wayne, Gotham's billionaire heartthrob. Perhaps this was leftover resentment from the way Lola had died – without the sort of money she needed to truly give her a chance to get well. Certainly, the man's parents had been saints. Their generous donations to the underprivileged had pretty much saved Lola's life the first time her cancer had appeared – but they had died, and the funds they'd established ran dry and eventually collapsed into dust. The old men running Wayne Enterprises while the young Wayne heir was gallivanting around the country's finest educational institutions had no interest in helping poor children from the Narrows. And Bruce Wayne proved to be more interested in getting laid by as many beautiful would-be-models than on running the business that was rightfully his.

Unimpressed by his sudden reappearance in Gotham and his many fund-raising parties, Louise couldn't help but wish that things _did_ go badly for him today – it just seemed so unfair that one person could get absolutely _everything_ that they wanted. Especially a person as lecherous and air-headed as Bruce Wayne.

When the man in question finally strolled into the conference room, three minutes late, he gave a lazy smile to everyone as he swaggered to his seat, two seats over and across from Louise.

"My apologies, gentlemen," he announced, completely ignoring the fact that at least seven of the people currently in the conference room were, in fact, females. She saw the women give each other the slightest of annoyed glances. "I ran into an old acquaintance of mine and took too long catching up. Shall we begin?"

A few of the senior partners at Dubois & Co. mumbled restlessly under their breaths. Louise wondered why anybody who was walking into a reevaluation of a billion-dollar partnership between one's company and another would act so blasé.

Wayne settled himself into his high-backed leather chair and adjusted his cuff links. They looked absurdly expensive; Louise wondered if one of them alone could manage to get her out of debt, and perhaps secure a home for her for at least another two months.

It all seemed so incredibly unfair. But then, it always had. She imagined what Jack would have to say if he were here, watching Bruce Wayne adjust his stylish suit jacket and straighten his tie. The boy she'd known would have engaged in some sarcastic, biting diatribe with the billionaire.

"Monsieur Dubois should be video conferencing in at any moment," Charles Lefevre, a senior partner, addressed Wayne icily.

Wayne said nothing, only gave a brief nod of his head. He was sitting quite close to her, truth be told, and Louise was struck at how bizarre the situation was. As a child, Bruce Wayne had been something like a fairytale knight to most of the girls in her school. Most of them entertained dreams of one day winning the heart of Gotham's most eligible bachelor, thus securing for themselves a life of decadence and glamor. Of course, nothing of the sort ever happened. Bruce Wayne was notorious for being a frequent womanizer; he definitely wasn't the marrying type.

This close, Louise could see the attraction those girls had to him – even in his thirties, as he must be now, Bruce Wayne was a very handsome man. He was dressed impeccably, of course, not a hair or button out of place. This careful attention to his wardrobe was not his only asset, however – Wayne had classically beautiful features, the kind one might find on a Roman statue. His nose was narrow and aquiline, his brow was high and expressive, his cheeks hollowed, his mouth wide and his jaw strong. He was, in short, typically good-looking. The sort of man who embodied the role of playboy billionaire perfectly.

Except . . .

Except there were hollows beneath his eyes, deep purple arcs that weighed heavily on him. Losing sleep, perhaps, because of the troubles his company was facing? Somehow, Louise doubted this. Bruce Wayne was not the type to lose sleep over his company. Then again, she had never pegged Bruce Wayne as the type to lose sleep over anything at all.

He did not look at her as she examined him, and she was grateful for this.

Monsieur Dubois finally buzzed into the conference room, his irate voice demanding whether or not everyone was present. Louise asked everybody if they were ready to begin, and had the obligatory mumbled acquiescence from all present.

Dubois addressed Wayne specifically next, saying, "We are here today to discuss a troubling personal problem that threatens to disrupt business between our company and Wayne Enterprises. I'm looking at the numbers your company is putting out, Mr. Wayne, and I confess that I am deeply disappointed. When we agreed to create a partnership – your company funding the development of some of my more advanced projects; my company supplying you with access to a myriad of technical and electronic goods that far surpass those of companies from, say, China – I expected you to handle yourself with more poise."

Louise related this message to Bruce Wayne, feeling rather awkward at berating him secondhand in the way she was. Nevertheless, he did not even glance at her. His gaze was fixed at the source of Monsieur Dubois's voice, a flat screen television that hung on the wall.

"Pardon me, Monsieur," Wayne said, smiling slightly, "but I don't recall handling myself _without_ poise . . ."

"You know very well what I'm speaking of, Wayne. This business with . . . with this Hush character . . . is unacceptable. Gotham has long held a very . . . odd . . . reputation. First the man you called the Scarecrow, then the Joker, and now this man who seems to have a personal vendetta against you . . . You understand, Mr. Wayne, that such things cannot continue if you wish to retain our business partnership."

Louise stumbled over the word "Hush" as Monsieur Dubois said it, certain he must have confused his words, or perhaps that she was translating wrong. It seemed to be correct, however, for Bruce Wayne did not look in the least surprised when she translated the message to him.

"The situation with this madman is regrettable, Mr. Dubois, but it is a personal issue that my security has been working very hard to resolve. It has nothing to do with any business that we conduct, now or in the future."

"Then why is it that sales for your company have dropped eleven percent – eleven percent, Mr Wayne! – since the appearance of Hush? Why is it that my business is suffering, if, as you say, it does not impact your connections? I've heard rumors, Wayne, that this man is threatening, even harming, those who continue to do business with you."

Bruce Wayne cleared his throat. "Any deaths or injuries sustained by my business partners have been pronounced horrible accidents by the Gotham police."

"Personally," Monsieur Dubois said coldly, "I don't hold the Gotham police in any sort of esteem. Forgive me, Mr. Wayne, when I tell you that I find your company to be a liability to the well-being of my life's work, as well as my life in general."

At this point Wayne seemed to be getting flustered, and Louise saw a glint of hard resentment in his eyes. When he spoke next, he did not only address Monsieur Dubois – he directed his comment at the senior partners sitting around the conference table, all of whom were looking dubiously at Wayne.

"Rest assured, gentlemen, that my business remains as secure as ever."

The words hung heavy in the air. Louise sat, stunned, staring blankly at Bruce Wayne. She did not translate this message, and after a brief thirty second silence, Wayne himself turned his confused gaze on her.

The _deja-vu_ was staggering. Wasn't it just the other night, perhaps last night, when that elusive blonde had said those very words to her? And the place, it was . . . she remembered now, it was here, right in this conference room. They were talking about something, something about Jack. That girl was giving her some sort of advice . . . she had said something about . . . something about . . .

God, what _was_ it? Why couldn't she remember? It had been important, something striking that had left her unsettled. It had been . . .

Bruce Wayne cleared his throat noisily, and Louise realized she had been sitting with her mouth parted, staring dumbly at the billionaire.

"I-I'm sorry," she mumbled quickly, cheeks flushing red with embarrassment. Monsieur Dubois narrowed his eyes as her in displeasure as she related Wayne's assurance to him.

"I wish I took comfort in your assurances, Mr. Wayne, but I'm afraid your word simply isn't enough in the business world. My people will speak to yours about how we will proceed. My regards."

The screen flickered into blackness. A stillness settled over the conference room. The wizened black man leaned over and whispered into Bruce Wayne's ear. The man himself looked incredibly somber, but his hard-as-flint expression did not give away anything of what he might be thinking beneath of that stoic facade. If it was a facade, that is.

"_There's still time, still someone who can help you. You know who he is, don't you, Louise? You know who he is."_

Finally, the words came back to her. Louise watched as Bruce Wayne stood from the very leather chair her elusive dream-girl had sat in. Without a word to anybody he exited the room, the black man following close behind. Several business men from Wayne Enterprises began rifling through papers, preparing for several hours of compromise with the representatives from Dubois & Co.

"Are you all right, honey?" A woman with her greying red hair pulled into a severe bun placed her hand on Louise's shoulder and looked down at her with concern. "Maybe you ought to ask to leave a little early today – the meeting is over, after all."

Distracted, Louise mumbled, "No, I'm fine, I just . . ." and then stood, scooping up her belongings clumsily and rushing out of the room after Bruce Wayne.

She was crazy, absolutely insane, for hurrying down the narrow hallways after a man who barely noticed her presence in the conference room. And Bruce Wayne? What could he _possibly_ have to do with her situation? The most he could contribute to society was his money, and though he gave that away generously to certain acceptable organizations, she doubted he could really help her. The Joker wasn't some destroyed hospital he could fund-raise away.

So why was she sprinting, now, looking frantically down hallways for a glimpse of his thousand-dollar suit?

Just as she was certain he'd already made his escape, Louise turned a corner and nearly ran directly into him.

Wayne was standing very close to the older black man from the conference room. They seemed to be speaking together in low, urgent tones. The minute Louise arrived breathlessly in front of them both mouths clamped shut.

"Does Monsieur Dubois want another word with Mr. Wayne?" the black man asked kindly.

Louise, who didn't quite know what she was supposed to say now that she was standing in front of this man – this entirely selfish, intimidating, thankless man – opened and closed her mouth several times, hoping she would suddenly find the words she so needed to say: _Help me, please, I don't know why I'm coming to you of all people, but for the love of God, _help_ me._

"No," she whispered finally, willing herself to say those very words. The wound on the back of her thigh stung from running as she had; it seemed to serve as a reminder of why she had chased Bruce Wayne down. A reminder of her deadly predicament. A reminder that if she didn't get help . . . if she didn't get help, there was no telling what might happen. To anyone.

Bruce Wayne stared down at her, hands tucked into his pockets, with a disdainful expression.

"Do you need something?" he asked bluntly. His annoyance with her was quite clear, and perhaps her status as the hated messenger didn't put her in any kind of favorable light with the man from the very beginning. Still, whatever hope she'd had at his helping her was dashed the minute she heard the sharp edges of his tone.

She shook her head slowly, backing up as she did so. What had she been thinking? Bruce Wayne?

Nobody, least of all Bruce Wayne, could help her. It was just her mind playing tricks, and she had been idiotic to listen to whatever nonsense her subconscious relayed to her during her sleep.

"No," Louise said. "No, I don't. I'm sorry."

She rounded the corner and darted out of sight, pressing her palms against her flushed face and cursing herself for every weakness she possessed. She couldn't turn Jack in, she couldn't escape him, she couldn't even try to get _help_ . . . What was she even _good_ for?

Distantly, the black man's low, soothing voice mumbled, "You might have been kinder to the poor woman, Mr. Wayne."

A loud sigh followed this utterance, and then the playboy's voice responded, "It's been a tough week, Lucius. Besides, since when has Bruce Wayne been known for his kindness?"

The other man chuckled lowly.

Louise snorted in disgust.

Leave it to cocky billionaires to refer to themselves in the third fucking person. She had to be out of her mind, thinking that jackass could help her.

Louise finished work that day and then trudged home, half-limping to the subway. She never saw Bruce Wayne again.


	29. Chapter 29

**A/N:** Uhm . . . Yeah. It's not March. Forgive me? Still, this wouldn't have been out until I-don't-know-when if it wasn't for those few INCREDIBLE individuals who actually read this story through and reviewed on _each chapter_ as they went along. Talk about dedication, guys. You made it possible for me to crank this one out. This idea, by the way - didn't even come to me until like, a few days ago. I was BLANK before then. Hopefully it doesn't disappoint. I think I'm back on track. I wrote this instead of a nine page paper due on Thursday for my Holocaust Studies class (thirty percent of my grade, btw, so be appreciative!) I LOVE you guys for all that you do and the support that you give me. You rockstars, you.

P.S. - There's a French sentence or two in here. I do not speak French. If any of you readers do, and care to give me the correct way of saying what I want, I would appreciate it. I like the tiniest things to be right, too. : )

* * *

"_Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."_

_~Oscar Wilde_

* * *

Louise couldn't recall the exact moment she surrendered her control, but she knew without a doubt that it had happened. The fight in her, the defiance, that absolute disgust – they slowly dissipated, smoke in the wind. One night she paced around her candle-lit apartment, wrung her hands, and cursed Jack's name; sometime not much later, she looked apathetically on him as he stood at her kitchen counter, sifting through her mail and squinting unhappily at bank statements.

"So _this _is why you, uh, can't keep the lights on?" he asked chidingly, holding up a long-overdue electricity bill and waving it to-and-fro in the air. He _tsk_ed at her in mother-hen fashion, and she couldn't quite get over the fact that there was a smear of dried blood on his neck that didn't appear to be his.

And there she stood, Louise Speller, staring at the Joker as calm as you please.

When did it come to this? When did she give up? She hadn't even known she'd been doing it, and before she could catch on, before she could rebel and regain control . . . it was gone.

"Well, what can I say. Your little homecoming celebration set me back. I'm still paying for the hospital bills. If you're planning on sticking around, insurance companies might consider putting a 'Joker' clause into some of their packages."

When did she begin to _joke_ around him, so casual, so blasé? What kind of a person did this genial exchange make her?

What kind of a person let the Joker into her home, let him speak to her calmly, let him _kiss _her?

She, Louise Speller, she let him do all those things. She was a monster now, just like him. When had it happened? When had he done it to her? So quietly, so smoothly, that she wasn't even aware it was happening?

The visits were sporadic at best, but over the past month they'd increased. This was, she believed, on account of the massive amounts of snow Gotham was getting during this holiday season. December passed into January and still sheets of it fell, coating the streets, causing more accidents than even the Joker had.

The Joker wasn't happy that his reign of terror had been interrupted, and a little upstaged, by Mother Nature. To cure his boredom, or just take out some of his frustration on her via a little mental torture, he would pay Louise a visit.

Today, he looked at her mail and examined her bruised fingers. This inspection had gone on for some weeks. It obviously didn't stem from any guilt on the Joker's part – there was not a flicker of regret or remorse in his eyes, ever. His reasons for checking on the progress of her wounds were secret and his alone. Today, he appeared to approve of what he saw. When he leaned in close, gloved hands holding up her own, she breathed in deeply and tasted the scent of him on her tongue.

He smelled like perfume.

Taken aback, Louise jerked her hands away from him and stared, brow furrowed. Of all the things she'd expected to smell on him – blood, fire, ash – women's perfume was, perhaps, last. Not only that, but when she took another deep breath she realized that it smelled horridly cheap, the kind of overdone musk that you got at a pharmacy on sale, _Eau de Sexii_.

Louise, casting her mind around for some plausible explanation, came up with two possible conclusions, neither of which endeared themselves to her:

The first was that his latest victim was some poor girl who, completely unaware that her life was about to end at the hands of the Joker, dressed for the day and splashed a bit too much perfume onto her neck and wrists.

The second was that the Joker had picked up a prostitute.

Scratch that. Louise, as she now knew for certain, was definitely far more disgusted at the second possibility. This realization did nothing to make her feel better about the situation – if anything, she understood what new lows she was reaching.

The Joker noticed none of the conflicting emotions showing on her face. He'd laughed harshly when she pulled away from him and then picked up another bill, this time one from the hospital.

"Did you kill anybody today?" Louise asked abruptly.

He raised his eyebrows but made no other expression.

"Yeah," the Joker said finally. "It _is_ a Tuesday, ya know."

"A woman?"

The Joker sighed, tossing the bill aside and glaring at her. "Well, that's an in-ter-esting question, _Louise_. One of them _looked_ like a woman, but that Adam's apple . . ."

"So you're killing transvestites, now? What's the point of that?"

Secretly, a great sense of relief was flooding through her. Somehow, the thought of Jack, even as degenerate as he was now, soliciting sex from some disgusting woman made her skin crawl. She knew she had no place to judge, what with her history, her mother's history. But she did. Nobody is ever as good as their intentions, and Louise wasn't sure her intentions were all that great to start out with, anyway.

"There isn't one," the Joker said, this time picking up a lingerie magazine and flipping directly into the middle. His mouth turned downwards and he tilted his head to one side as he examined a page. "Is it still snow-ing?"

"Yes," she replied automatically, without even looking out of her window. Great, huge flakes had been coming down since early that afternoon, and the weather was predicted to persist throughout the night. "But if you're planning on terrorizing a precinct or something, you might wanna wash up. You smell a bit like the ladies section of a thrift store."

This jab was supposed to exasperate him, perhaps point out something he himself had missed. When he brought his sleeve up to his face to sniff it, she didn't expect the look of revulsion and anger that passed over his garish features.

"Don't look so horrified," she told him dryly, "it's just perfume. Maybe you shouldn't get so up close and personal with your poor murder victims next. . ."

One withering look from him made her stammering words trail off. Instinctively Louise twisted her hands together, then immediately regretted the action. She had removed all but one of the finger splints, but most of them were still exceedingly sore.

The Joker pushed passed her, shedding his heavy overcoat on the way. As usual, the sight of his body, Jack's body, made her breath catch. It was so easy to forget that the Joker and Jack Napier were the same person. Many times, Louise would rather put off their resemblance to an uncanny coincidence. There were actually times when she would lay in bed, pretending that the Joker was nothing more than another one of her flings, shadows of Jack to be carefully discarded when the illusion started to fade. The crux of the matter was, it never did fade. He _was _Jack in exactly the same ways he wasn't. With the face paint and lurid attire, she could very well convince herself that they were separate beings. But not like this. Not when she saw that tailored suit clinging so perfectly to his body.

And this was her weakness, this was her selfishness. Louise Speller allowed a murderer to cross her threshold because when she looked at him . . . when she looked at him, the worst things that had ever happened in her life seemed to disappear.

The Joker set the jacket carefully across her coffee table, cluttered with junk mail and Chinese take-out boxes. Some of the mess he swept onto the floor carelessly, and she didn't dare protest when his expression looked so thunderous.

For a long while, they didn't speak, and Louise hovered uncertainly in the background, sifting through her mail halfheartedly. The bills were marked in red ink, a bright 'PAY US' reminder from whomever it was that was sending. In the next two days, she was getting a paycheck. Whether or not the check would cash in time for her to pay her rent was a question even she couldn't answer.

"Do you remember when we would just sit up for hours and hours and go over bills?" she said finally, her finger trailing over one of the aforementioned objects. It was all so familiar, really. Jack and Louise, together again, separated by a pile of bills and tension. "And you would tap your fingers in that irritating rhythm, the one you saved for just those times . . ."

The Joker smoothed his hands slowly over his vest, ironing out the wrinkles with his palms. He stood out starkly against the bland white-and-beige decoration scheme of her apartment, a splash of violent color through a pretty, safe little picture. Louise felt her eyes linger on his shoulders. The overpowering desire to press her lips to the hollow of his throat swept over her.

"No," he said. "Can'_t_ say I do."

There was a sort of savage brutality in the way he said it, the way his dark eyes met hers as the words passed his lips. Whether he was lying or telling the truth didn't matter, and he knew it. His intent was cruel; he loved to make her suffer.

The closer they got, the easier it became to hurt one another. His discerning mind was sorting out the exact tortures that would be most effective on her; she, in turn, burned with the exact questions that angered him most. Louise felt as though they were like magnetic poles being pushed together by the hands of Fate. She had to wonder when, exactly, they would collide – haphazardly, crookedly, but smashed together nonetheless.

Louise didn't know when she gave in, but even now she could feel the last bits of her resolve falling away. The need for him was already oppressive, culminating to an ache after days, weeks, without seeing him. When he was around, it was hell – every bit of her hated the sight of him. Yet, there were moments that came unbidden, that she tried her best to push away, when she would look at the Joker and want to touch him in the same ways she'd always wanted to touch Jack. Her palms on his chest, cool lips pressed to the pulse in his neck, hips locked. It was beautiful when they'd been together. In the midst of everything – the Narrows, Lola's sickness, their parents' abandonments – it was beautiful.

No matter how badly she yearned for those things, Louise was determined never to give in. Not to that. Not to him, not in that way. Poverty and mob money and leukemia she could deal with, but clown makeup and mass murder? It was too much.

There were still some lines left that Louise Speller would never cross.

* * *

After several great, shocking hitches, Louise's life began to run smoothly again. Her routines, her "normal", had changed forever, but there was a calm within the chaos that, surprisingly, she got used to. Clearly, the Joker wasn't done with her. But his visits were mellow and happened less frequently as the winter dragged on; his lack of action almost lulled Louise into a sense of security. Sometimes, late at night, she would lay awake in bed and think to herself: _It's Jack. I know it is. It can't be a coincidence that after finding me again his activity levels plummets – it can't be a coincidence. It can't be. It can't be. _

Louise told herself many lies.

The citizens of Gotham held their breath until the end of January, waiting for the other shoe to fall, but by the beginning of February they let out a collected sigh. Most supposed that the Joker had fallen into a sullen fit of depression because he'd failed to call Batman back into action, and that as long as the masked vigilante didn't show up again, they'd be fine. This wasn't entirely off-base, except for one thing – the Joker wasn't sullen, he was _pissed_. He was also doggedly committed to the Batman, and Louise knew just by the look in his smoldering eyes that he took Batman's rebuff as a personal insult. He wasn't done – not by a long shot. The thought of what Gotham had coming made Louise break out into a cold sweat. She tried her best not to think about it.

Louise had finally managed to get back onto her feet. She had a steady paycheck again, her electricity was back on, her fingers were no longer broken, and the ugly gash on the back of her thigh was beginning to heal with some rapidity. It had completely scabbed over at least, which was great progress in Louise's estimation.

The only persisting problem Louise faced was one she didn't think she'd ever have to admit, even to herself:

The Joker was visiting her so little that she actually longed for him.

His interest in her had, for the time being, receded. This concept in and of itself stung, though Louise was certain he wasn't even close to being finished with her. It was mostly the uncertainty of it all that disturbed her most.

If the Joker wasn't terrorizing Gotham, and he wasn't terrorizing Louise. . . . then what was he doing?

The question was ominous and troubling, and Louise delved into work to keep from being reminded about the Joker's absence. Most nights, Louise worked overtime, possible only because of Monsieur Dubois' change of heart concerning Wayne Enterprises. Their renewed partnership probably had something to do with the billions Bruce Wayne had poured into Dubois and Co. in a last-ditch effort to salvage _one_ business partner, but Louise hardly minded. The extra work kept her occupied, kept her from asking too many unanswerable, distressing questions about the Joker that she hadn't time nor energy to answer.

Bruce Wayne himself looked more haggard than ever. People shunned his acquaintance, and for perhaps the first time in the billionaire's life, doors were shut to him. Only his childhood friend Thomas Elliot stood at his side, now, as all the tabloids liked to proclaim dramatically on their headlines. Wayne's ongoing battle with Hush had taken center stage in Gotham, a surprising turn of events that the Gotham News was wary to point out, for fear of irritating the Joker into a renewed attack on the city. And it _was_ bizarre – that the Joker, the worst criminal Gotham had ever faced, was free, and yet _Hush_ was the name on everybody's lips? It was unthinkable, preposterous, downright._ . . wrong_.

February's weather was freezing, with an undercurrent of unease and anxiousness. Even this, though, couldn't keep spirits down. Valentine's Day was fast approaching, and though Gotham had traded one madman for another, the public greatly preferred Hush. Hush targeted one person specifically – the Joker was volatile and random, and an ordinary citizen was just as likely to meet their death at his hands as a public official was. At least most could rest easy.

This mindset was selfish and cruel, and yet Louise encountered it everywhere. Even Louise felt glad of the Joker's inactivity, though for completely different reasons. His killings and the destruction he wreaked caused her a pain that nobody else in Gotham could truly appreciate.

Louise never truly thought, though, that it was over. The fact remained that the Joker was cunning and brilliant, and any retreat he made was for the express purpose of striking out later with renewed vigor.

It had to happen sometime, there was no question. Louise just wished, foolishly, that it never would.

On this day at the beginning of February, Louise, like the rest of her harried coworkers, was in a semi-frenzied state. Monsieur Dubois had made one of his sporadic, unexpected company visits to crucify them all for being incompetent asses and running his company into the ground – exaggerations, of course, but the man was nothing if not sadistic. Louise was certain the ornery old bastard made this trip – the second she'd been privileged enough to experience since her time at the company – for his own amusement. Almost like a vacation.

It didn't help that she was required to be at his side at all times, because though the man was fluent in English, he absolutely refused to speak in a tongue that was not his native language. His resolve and unbending will had gotten him his company, his riches, and his beautiful wife – it was also why every person who met him despised him. Already, seven people had quit, and Louise was responsible for shouting out expletives at their backs as they strode away, lest she be fired herself for refusing to comply.

She'd experienced life without electricity one too many times – a few dirty words were the least of her troubles.

It wasn't until Cheryl, Monsieur Dubois's personal assistant for the duration of his stay in America, took the first chance possible to hide in a supply closet and take one too many prescription meds that Louise's day got really bad.

All this had happened before one in the afternoon, and, because Monsieur Dubois had spent his lunch hour telling the paramedics exactly why he thought Cheryl would want to drug herself into a coma, he was in a fair state of agitation.

He pointed one gnarled finger at Louise. "_Toi! Je veux du café. Noir, sans sucre, sans crème. Bien, pourquoi attends-tu? Vas-y_!"

When Louise attempted to make the coffee herself in one of the lounges, Monsieur Dubois spit his mouthful of it all over her shirt. Disgusted, barely able to hold her tongue, Louise fumed silently as Dubois barraged her with personal insults and then demanded she leave the building to get coffee three blocks away at his favorite café.

Blouse streaked with dark liquid, hair a mess, and eyes flashing, Louise snatched up her purse and jacket and hurried out of her office. Her phone was ringing insistently when she stormed out across the threshold, straight into her coworker Glenn Bradley.

"Louise, doll, your phone's been ringing for –"

"_No_ time, Glenn," Louise snapped. The well-groomed gay man, perhaps Louise's favorite person at the company, looked at her disheveled appearance and frowned in commiseration. "Dubois is being a fucking tyrant, and now I have to run all his errands on top of everything. Not to mention the bastard won't communicate with _anyone_ unless I'm saying his words for him, so unless I _fly_ to that café and back in less than two seconds, I'm going to get fired. And, for fuck's sake, can someone go _unplug my damn phone!_"

"On it!" Glenn said quickly. Louise shot him a look of thanks and then hurried on her way.

The five minutes it took to run, in heels, the three blocks to Monsieur Dubois's favorite café was unacceptable. And, being lunchtime, the joint was packed. Even after mentioning the order was Monsieur Dubois, a well-known customer, it took another ten minutes. By the time Louise started out for the company, nearly twenty minutes had elapsed.

She hadn't made it halfway back to work when she heard the gunshots. They were so loud, felt so close, that Louise dropped the coffee she was carrying and fell to her knees, shaking and afraid. It felt like just yesterday that she'd been out walking and suddenly, Sara Burton was dead, and people were screaming, and –

The Joker. She knew it, suddenly, in a way that she hadn't the last time. This was his doing. The shots splitting through the air some distance away were coming from his guns, his men. The screams issuing from a block away, the shattering glass, the calls for help – Gotham had been waiting for a comeback, and she knew now that they'd gotten it.

A fierce sort of hatred possessed her then, perhaps stemming from all of those late, idealistic nights she'd spent hoping, praying, that her reappearance in Jack's life had made him rethink things. Before, she'd been quick to tell herself she was an idiot for even thinking something like that. Now, this felt like a betrayal. She hoisted herself back onto her feet and hurried towards the source of the terror. Snow flurries had started to fall, dusting the streets with white that danced in the smallest of winds. The running feet of people kicked up this dust until everybody hurtling through the streets, fleeing from the gunshots that were still echoing through the air, looked as though they had cyclones for legs.

Louise ran towards the noise, heedless of her safety. She had to see him in action, had to watch him load a semi-automatic and blow innocent people away for herself. Maybe then, once she saw it, she would know for sure . . . maybe then, she would have the strength to go to the police and tell them everything. Maybe then, she wouldn't look at him and _want_ things, things that made her sick to her stomach for even considering.

When she came up to her office building and saw the shattered windows, saw the security guard lying in a puddle of his own blood, face down, at the entrance – his name was Frank, wasn't it? – she could hardly understand it. Several feet in front of Frank, a casualty, was another dead man – this one was wearing a white clown mask, red tufts of fake hair sticking out of the sides, just above where the ears would be. The painted lips were frowning.

Screams were still ripping through the air, and the endless sounds of bullets didn't cease. There were people inside of her building, terrorists, the Joker's men, and they were shooting _everyone_. Killing everyone, men, women, it didn't matter – a thousand or more people employed there. The capacity for carnage was unthinkable.

Louise felt her knees grow weak. He hadn't just targeted anywhere, he'd targeted _her_ – he'd targeted her place of business; he was killing everybody she knew, anybody she'd talked to; eliminating every worldly tie she had save him, so that . . . so that she had nobody. So that there was no one.

And what better way to do it? Such violence, such destruction, such blatant disregard for human life. An explosion is easy and simple – these men were looking their victims in the eyes and blowing them away. This was horrifying.

What would he do when he realized she wasn't there? If his intention had been to kill her too then he had failed, and that would infuriate him. If his intention had been to spare her, to put her in the middle of it all, to force her to see it, and then to rip her away from the dying just as she began to pray she'd go with them . . .

She hadn't been there. She'd been out getting coffee. Everybody inside of that building was dying, and Louise had left it to get coffee.

Behind her, there was a screeching of tires as a car swung around the corner, towards the scene. Louise assumed it must be the police, because she could still hear the bullets, still hear faint screams. She stayed where she was, staring up at the squat glass building in horror, too appalled to move, too nauseated to scream. The vehicle pulled up directly behind her and she heard a van door slide open. The next second, strong hands grabbed the back of her shirt and dragged her across the cement sidewalk.

She didn't struggle, because she knew it was him, and rage was making her shake uncontrollably.

The Joker threw her into the back of a van and then leaped up into it himself, whipping the door closed and then rounding on her, fury on his face. Louise lay sprawled out on the van's floor, surrounded by duffel bags and rusty tools and guns, for only a moment before she flew at him, claws extended.

"_Why_? Why would you do it, why would you kill them all? You bastard, you fucking _bastard!_" She pummeled him with her fists, hitting every inch she could reach – his jaw, chest, arms, neck – knowing all the while that her attempts were ineffectual. Louise didn't care. She wanted to hurt Jack more than she'd ever wanted to hurt him in her whole life. She wanted to wrap her fingers around his throat and squeeze, make _him_ feel his life being stolen from him. "Why aren't you in there, why aren't you doing it too? Did you run out of _bullets_? Couldn't _face_ me? You'd rather have some . . . fucking . . . _thug_ do me in?"

She punctuated this with more blows; she got him in the face with a mix between a slap and a punch that felt weak, even to her. The Joker had had enough – his hands whipped through the air and captured her wrists, spinning her around and pinning her up against the side of the van. Louise could feel the vehicle rocking beneath of them as it hurtled through the streets, away from her workplace, away from those dead people. Away from his mess.

Finally, the Joker spun her around, the heels of his hands pressed so firmly against her shoulders that she felt her shoulder blades grind against the metal wall of the van.

He was visibly livid, teeth bared and lip split from a ring on her right hand.

"_So . . . many . . . _questions!" The van spun around a corner; the Joker hardly swayed. "_Here's _a good one – How many _Masks_ does it take to kill you? One, two, threefourfive-uh?" He shook his head, green curls shaking, and burst into laughter. It went on forever, until Louise was nearly crying from distress.

"Stop it, _stop!_"

With several heaving breaths, the Joker quelled his mirth. He was still smiling, scars stretched taut to reveal his strait, stained teeth, as he wiped away the frustrated tears from her cheeks.

"_What _were you doing outside of that building?" he crooned at her. He spoke like a man would to his little daughter, a child who had just gotten herself into a sticky mess and then stood in front of him with a trembling lip. Softly chiding, affectionately amused. His leathery hands moved up to cradle the back of her head. "You went to work, I _saw_ ya go."

"I guess you didn't _see_ me leave for coffee," Louise choked out, enraged to find herself so close to tears. The Joker looked down at her, eyes narrowed. She couldn't see anger there, but the fingers at the nape of her neck tightened around strands of hair, pulling until her eyes watered and she felt herself tilt her head back, giving to the pressure.

The minute she parted her lips to cry out from the pain, the Joker slammed his mouth down over hers.

Louise knew the minute their lips touched that this wasn't like the last two kisses – the first a torturous device used to taunt her, the second a truce wrapped up in a lie. He kissed her savagely, wildly, and when she regained her senses enough to close herself off to him, he bit her until she bled and was forced to open up.

Still it might have felt the same, she might have believed that it was just another of his tricks, if it wasn't for the sharp corner they turned, and the Joker, so calculating, so in control of his limbs and his movements, lost his balance and fell.

He took her along with him as they crashed to the van floor, her body sprawled out awkwardly on top of his. The grip he had on her hair was still firm, tight to the point of physical pain. Louise pushed her tangled hair from her eyes and then reached for his wrist, digging her fingernails into his skin until, finally, he let go. His tongue flicked out continuously to run along the edges of his scars, a habit that happened more frequently when he was feeling strong emotions of some kind, usually excitement.

"Why did you do it, Jack?" She grabbed a handful of his vest and balled her hands into fists around the cloth. "Why did you try to kill me?"

The Joker sucked on the inner ridges of his scars for a moment before he shook his head and replied, "_I_ didn't."

Louise slammed her hand into the Joker's heaving chest, her lips trembling. She was tired of the games; tired of him using physical affection as a diversionary tactic, as a weapon; tired of always _feeling_ this way – trapped, humiliated, furious, afraid.

"Your men, your masks – _don't_ lie, I saw it, I –"

"No, no, _no. _Just . . . my masks."

Louise, still perched awkwardly on top of him, stared down at his painted face with mistrust. The Joker raised his eyebrows and stared her down. Louise wasn't buying it.

"You want me to believe that someone _else_ dressed up guys in clown masks to go massacre my company? Do you think I'm fucking _stupid_? Who would _do_ that?"

Now the fury was back, the unrestrained hatred that Louise had first saw when he dragged her into the van. The Joker's jaw clenched tightly, until she could see a vein pulsing underneath of his skin. When the word hissed out it was venomous, filled with the promise of retribution:

"_Hush_."


	30. Chapter 30

**A/N:** Okay, so. Here ya go. I returned from my trip to Poland and then abruptly caught a cold. I'm only just now getting over it. Hopefully, this doesn't disappoint. I am wondering, though, how many **male** readers I have? I know the Joker/OC thing is usually something dominated by females, but there's gotta be some guys out there, right? Let me know if you're reading, boys!

* * *

_"Desire is the source of our most noble aspirations and our deepest sorrows. The pleasure and the pain go together; indeed, they emanate from the same region in our hearts. We cannot live without the yearning, and yet the yearning sets us up for disappointment-sometimes deep and devastating disappointment."_

_~John Eldredge_

* * *

The van skidded to an abrupt halt. Louise, staring down at the Joker's livid visage in stupefaction, lost her balance and toppled sideways. Her head slammed into the sliding metal door and she heard the Joker whoop with laughter. He climbed to his feet. Even in spite of the height of the vehicle, the Joker had to hunch his shoulders and curve his spine to keep from hitting the ceiling.

With a curled fist, the Joker pounded on the blackened glass partition separating the back of the van from the driver's seat. After a few seconds, it slid open. A young man with a blond crew cut peered out. He was normal looking, not especially attractive or especially ugly – but his eyes were dead, completely and utterly vacant of expression or feeling. Not one line of his face changed as he looked at the Joker. She was no shrink, but Louise knew there was something deeply wrong with that man. All the hairs on her body stood on end.

"_How _about . . . a little more finesse, hmm?" the Joker mimed steering the wheel, and the man nodded slowly. "Good boy. We, uh, have a little guest."

The Joker cleared his throat and gestured grandly to Louise, who was sitting in a heap on the rusty floor, her clothes filthy and her skirt hitched up nearly around her hips. The blond man's eyes immediately surveyed her with that same chilling impassiveness.

"You know what that means . . ." the Joker continued, cocking one eyebrow at the driver and waiting for a response that would please him.

It took quite some time for the blond to answer; he worked his jaw, squinted his eyes, and scratched at his nose before replying, "Location three."

"_Right!_" the Joker clapped his gloved hands and then rubbed them together. "It's a real _party _now."

Louise flinched at the menace in his voice. Visits to her apartment were one thing, but this was reaching an entirely different level – Louise had never been to one of the Joker's hideouts before. At least, that was where she assumed he was taking them. The implications of this action were disquieting at best.

The partition closed.

"Why would Hush kill all of those people?" she asked immediately. The van lurched forward; the Joker held out one hand to steady himself.

"He did _warn _your boss about dealing with Wayne. Come on, ya know his M.O. Put two-and-two _to_gether." The Joker entwined his purple fingers and clicked his tongue at her. When her eyes widened in realization, the Joker lowered himself to the van's floor, long legs sprawled out in front of him.

"Oh, God," Louise moaned, dragging her hands over her face. "It was because he was there, that _bastard_ Monsieur Dubois."

The enormity of Monsieur Dubois' business deal, as well as the extreme predicament Bruce Wayne was currently in, swallowed Louise whole for a moment. Her narrow escape, the coincidence of it all, almost seemed . . . unfair. A cup of coffee – a fucking _cup of coffee_ – had ultimately saved her life. And the rest of them? Those poor innocents who had probably never even laid eyes on Bruce Wayne? Where were they, now? Their bloodied bodies, the families they probably had – it was all so _real_, so horrible.

Her voice was hardly more than a faint croak when she asked her next question.

"But I don't understand – why would he use your masks? Why would he want everyone thinking that _you_ killed those people? It's not like he has a reputation to uphold or something, I mean, he's a mur-"

Louise stopped short, heart freezing mid-beat as she realized exactly what she was saying, and to whom. The man in question, however, only sent a nasty grin her way.

"Murderer? That _is_ his reputation. And _all _the little news stations in Gotham are going cuh-_razy_ over him right now. Big, bad _Hush_. He's, uh, gotten a little cocky."

"What does that have to do with you?"

The Joker looked positively irate by this point.

"A few weeks ago, he comes to me . . . asking about _employment_."

"He wanted to work for _you_?"

"Ah, ah, ah – he wanted _me_ to work for _him_."

Certainly, suggestions that were more ludicrous had been made, but at that point in time, Louise Speller couldn't think of one.

It was like the Gotham City News broadcasting Hush day-and-night, documenting him, expressing their fears about what he might be planning when someone like the Joker roamed free on their streets – there was blindness in it all, a complete lack of comprehension on the part of the public. Hush was a murderer, he was a madman, but he was _nothing_.

He was nothing compared to the man sprawled out on the van floor across from her, all volatile brilliance and indiscriminate violence. Even she knew that, and she hadn't even _been _in Gotham when the Joker first made waves.

The suggestion Hush had made not only displayed a self-conceit and presumptuousness that was, frankly, appalling; it had insulted the Joker's intellect, his cunning, and his status in this city as the most destructive, clever criminal Gotham had ever known. Louise understood enough of the Joker's massive ego to know what this meant:

Hush had started a war.

"What did you say to him?"

"I laughed." The Joker seemed to think deeply for a moment and then added, "Oh, maybe something else about giving him a _real_ reason to wear those ban-da-ges around his _face_."

He sucked vulgarly on the inner ridges of his scars and waggled his eyebrows at her. Louise wrapped her arms around her knees and tugged at a rip in her nylons. Pale skin peeked through, framing an ugly purple bruise blossoming up in the shape of a lotus flower on her skin. She hadn't even felt it happen.

"But he did it anyway. He put on a show, and he's hoping that the public will think he's gotten so powerful, even _you're_ working for him?"

"Our boy was a bit _miffed_ at me. Thought I wasn't. . . taking him _seriously_." His voice resonated within the hollow metal shell of the van, thronging like a plucked E string on an acoustic guitar. "But ya know . . . it had to come to this. Ya get a rookie like _him_ . . . thinking . . . that it's just this _easy_."

"Isn't it?"

"Well _now_. . . . yeah." The van skidded to another halt; the Joker hopped upright, as nimbly as a cat. "But that's not the point. Any little Tom, Dick, or Harry can make a mess of the house when he's home alone. It's only a _statement _when you do it . . . . right . . . under . . . Dad's . . . nose."

The Joker tapped one index finger against his temple and then strode past her, wrenching open the van doors; Louise flinched and covered her ears at the horrid metallic shrieking they made.

He hopped out, scarcely glancing back at her as she scrambled clumsily out of the vehicle. Part of her wanted to stay there, wait it all out, perhaps test her luck and try to hijack the van and get the hell out of –

The breath was knocked out of Louise as she realized where they were, where he had taken her. After all of his vacant stares and bitter responses, after all of his acidic assurances that he had no connection to the man he had been before the Joker, that he didn't remember, after all of that . . .

He'd taken them home.

It was mid-afternoon, but the Narrows was empty. The streets were bare. This place had once thrived, hummed, with human life – people had been everywhere, living together like sardines, sinfully and dangerously and desperately. It had been a horrible place then, but somehow the absence of it all now was ominous; somehow, it was worse. All of those people, the thousands of poor, beleaguered families that had called this despicable place their _home_ – where were they, now? Where had they all _gone_ after that infamous night Jonathon Crane's fear toxin had spread havoc in the city? How many had died right here, in front of the building she'd once lived in? How many were now homeless and afraid, the only affordable shelters in Gotham City closed to them?

This emptiness was chilling, and Louise was standing in the middle of it.

The Joker was nowhere in sight, but Louise didn't worry about finding him. Standing blackly against the grey sky was Jack's old apartment building, his old home. She knew where he'd be, and for now, he could wait. Her eyes immediately travelled past his building, scanning the street for another recognizable piece of architecture.

When she pinpointed the space her home had once occupied, an unexplainable sense of loss filled her. The home that she had despised with all of her being the first second she laid eyes on it; the place she'd sworn to hate for as long as she resided there; the place where, just hours after swearing all of that stuff, she'd gone outside, sat on her stoop, and saw a boy standing in the street . . .

It was gone. Asbestos, fire, building code violations – whatever it had been, a liquor store had taken its place. There was nary a remnant of it left. That room she'd painted herself, using her own pocket money for the cans of pastel colors, was destroyed forever.

Suddenly frightened that, if she waited much long, she wouldn't get to see Jack's old apartment again before it, too, collapsed into dust, Louise hurried into the building. The place was a wreck – graffiti lined every wall, and great, gaping holes filled with scuttling, squeaking sounds punctuated the juvenile artwork. Trash and chunks of drywall littered the floor. As she moved through the stairwell that she still knew by heart, even after all this time, Louise had to cover her nose to keep from inhaling the putrid stench of urine, fecal matter, and rot. There was no telling what, or who, had died in these rooms, but she guessed most of them had had absolutely nowhere else to go.

When she reached the apartment door, Louise paused. It was closed, and the number was gone – she couldn't remember what it had been, now. As a child, she used to polish those things, knock with her feet, out of some misguided superstition. Like, if she didn't do it, things would go horribly wrong. As if, by continuing to do it, she could _stop_ them from going horribly wrong.

She'd been so young and foolish.

It took her some time to work up the nerve to open that door. How many years had she spent obsessing over the people who had lived there? How many years after she left it had she longed for it with every particle of her being? How many nights did she spend thrashing about in a home, in a room, that never felt like her own? Jack wasn't next to her, Jack was in the cold, dark waters lining Gotham City, and the place they'd last slept together had new occupants, new people to fill it with stories of heartbreak. Louise had hated the memory of this apartment just as much as she had loved it.

Never once since she'd left this place had she expected to open this door with the absolute knowledge that Jack Napier would be waiting for her inside.

At this thought, Louise twisted the doorknob open, hurrying inside. In the instant before she entered, she pictured him just as he'd been when they last saw one another – she'd stood on her tiptoes to kiss his lips, set in a straight line, and for just a moment they'd lingered. That had been their only goodbye.

"And _you_ say . . . I don't remember."

Her idle fantasies could never come to fruition, of course. She knew that. Still, the Joker's greeting hurt. It hurt in ways she couldn't even explain to herself, let alone begin to try and articulate. The door clicked closed behind her, and Louise was left alone with the Joker, standing in the shell of the home they'd once shared.

"This isn't even about memory, Jack. You're cruel. This is about torture. That's all anything is ever about with you."

"That hurts," he said, pressing one hand to his heart. The tone of his voice told her she was exactly right.

"So does this."

"What can I say? I guess I'm just . . . . no good at gift giving."

By this point, she was ignoring him. There were more important things than his passive aggressive jibes to take into consideration. The kitchen cabinets were all hanging open, for example, as if somebody had rummaged frantically through them. There was no furniture in the living room. The carpet was soiled, and, by the window, wet. Louise passed very close to the Joker to get into the hallway; he said nothing, but those burning eyes followed her as she went to farthest room and opened the door.

Lola's room was empty, too. Louise hadn't been able to bear moving all of the stuff out when she left. The bed Lola had died in had still been there as she walked out of this place eleven years ago. The fuzzy, potted plant Lola had doted on had still been sitting on the windowsill, wilting, as if it understood that its gentle owner was no longer a part of this world. Louise had put a binder full of Lola's drawings, journal entries, and photographs into Jack's empty coffin, along with the deity sweatshirt she'd given him and a threadbare jacket he'd worn for almost six straight years during the winter.

They had still smelled like him when she gave them to the funeral director. It was almost more than she could do to let him take them. But keeping them would have driven her crazy, would have pushed her over the edge, and she didn't know what else to do except to move on.

"I thought you'd go into the other one."

Oh yes, the other room. Maybe he was referring to the one they'd shared a few blissful weeks in together. Maybe he was talking about the pitiful excuse of a room his closet had been for the majority of his adolescence. It didn't matter.

"Is that the one _you_ went into first?"

He said nothing. They both knew. This place had never been theirs. It had been hers, Lola's, and the absence of her was what made the walls crumble, it was why the place was probably the least desecrated room in the building. No human feces, no graffiti, no vandalism. This was Lola's home, she had died here, and even if you hadn't known her, you could feel it.

"Sometimes I forget . . ." Louise began, her throat tight. "The shape of her nose, the way she laughed . . . sometimes I can't remember. You know what? It hurts more than anything you'll ever do to me."

Her eyes were blurry as she turned to look at him, realizing then that she didn't much care to know how he took her words. Without checking his expression, Louise walked right past him.

The next room was theirs. This, too, was empty. Louise lingered here for only a moment before moving on. The closet was next, and it was here she encountered the first piece of furniture. It was a cot, much like the one that had once resided in this space. A blanket was crumpled up at the bottom, and a well-beaten pillow smeared with greasepaint sat at the other end. This was where the Joker slept.

"A bit cramped, isn't it?" said Louise. "Did you set up here out of nostalgia?"

"No_t_ exactly. My boys are a bit . . . _unstable_. Sometimes, the voices, they, uh, make a pret-ty good argument for killing me while I sleep. I get an extra second to grab my gun."

"And the other room? Why not that one?"

The Joker didn't answer her. In a way, he didn't need to.

"You don't use this place much."

"I've got somewhere else where I hang my hat." The Joker leaned against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest. "This is a, uh, _stopover_ joint. Eat, wash, rest."

"_Wash_?" Louise said disparagingly, looking at his greasy roots and then punctuating the stillness with a staccato laugh. "Now there's a joke."

Her biting remark was met by a sharp burst of laughter. The Joker waggled a finger at her.

"Keep it _up._"

"Or what?"

Maybe it was the building; maybe it was standing there in his old room, so unchanged by time. There was Jack, standing in front of her, ill-tempered from a long day killing and scheming with the mob, tempers running hot on both sides. Louise was as patient as she could be with him, then, but he always made things so damn difficult.

The Joker opened his mouth, sucked in a breath of air, as if prepping for a long, blown out speech, punctuated with his distinctive, drawling inflections. Truth was, Louise was tired of it. He'd taken her back to the one place she was in her element, at least in regards to him. Part of her whispered: _What would Lola say if she were here, and you let him treat you like you've been? She would be disgusted. She wouldn't want you in her home. _

"You know what? I don't think you're going to hurt me."

"You _don't_."

He tilted his head to the side to stare at her for a long moment. Louise met this cold look with her own glare of stubborn resentment. Instead of quelling him, as a part of her hoped it might, her obstinacy seemed to amuse him. His lips twitched; his eyes glinted with something that might have been glee.

The Joker took one deliberate, drawn-out step towards her, shoulders rounded forwards.

Louise looked him up and down and then crossed her arms.

In the split second before the Joker lunged at her, Louise saw everything perfectly clear: the way his weight shifted from one leg to the other; the quiet rasp of his shoe against the floor as he positioned himself; the way his fingers flexed and waved, like the legs of a spider, in a jittery demonstration of his own excitement.

The Joker launched himself towards her, but Louise was way ahead of him: she ducked beneath his outstretched arm and scrambled out of the closet, tripping and sliding over the floor but regaining her balance just as quickly. She heard the Joker's body slam into the wall right after he missed her, all of that force wasted.

He was spry, though; she'd only made it halfway to their old bedroom when he appeared at the closet doorway, and by the time she actually reached the room and flung open the door, he was almost on top of her. The Joker's legs were far longer, far more accustomed to sprinting short distances, than Louise's were. Thus, when she spun around and slammed the door closed, his palm was there to act as a doorstop.

He wrenched open the door, stepped into the room, and then slammed it closed. There was a pronounced smile on his face, now: The Joker had quite enjoyed her little burst of resistance. The message, though, was clear, shining out at her from behind of his dark, stormy irises: Game's over. I win. After everything he'd gone through with Hush, he was in no mood to play.

"So now you'll, what, hold me down and give me another scar? Scratch me up until I look just like _you_?"

The Joker's eyebrows raised, as if he couldn't quite believe how far she was taking this. Louise felt like a woman possessed; she couldn't stop, even though her heart was fairly thrumming against her breast. This was their home they were standing in, this was their room. He had held her while she slept in this room; she had given him her _virginity_ in just the place she was standing. Louise wouldn't be treated like trash; wouldn't let him bully her and break her as she had every other time.

This place reminded her of who she was, who she had been – who she could still be, if she willed it.

In response to her acerbic remark, the Joker shed his long overcoat. The two of them took to circling one another, Louise backing slowly away from him as he prowled, a natural predator. It wasn't about how well they played the parts: it was about the statement. It was about the defiance.

Louise could never win a battle of wills with him. She knew that. Winning wasn't the point, after all. It was how she lost that meant everything.

The Joker froze in his tracks. For a split second, just a moment, Louise thought she might have him.

And then, finger by finger, he took off his gloves.

The shock of seeing bare skin, beige flesh, floored Louise. She stood stock still, fairly gaping at him as he shed the purple leather. For a moment those long, white fingers gripped the gloves tightly in clenched fists. Then, as easily as you please, he tossed them away.

From where she was, across the room, Louise could make out the softness of the backs of his hands; she could see the bones, the tendons, even the miniscule ridges where blue veins ran like streams underneath of his skin. But beyond that, nothing. Not the small intricacies that meant _everything_ to her; not the notches, the freckles, that she could press her lips to and think_ I remember this, I've kissed this scar before_.

The Joker chuckled darkly at her spellbound visage. He held up his hands, curling his fingers into a fist and then extending them slowly, stretching them out as if this was the first time in ages they'd been released from their leather prison. Louise followed the movements with hungry eyes. She hated herself for it.

Despising oneself is easy, almost entirely too easy, when dealing with the Joker. Looking at him, seeing his hands, _longing_ for unspeakable things – it was so easy to despise herself, and she did, every other moment at least. This self-loathing, though, however strong it might be, did nothing to dispel the need she felt for Jack. Nothing ever had. When Louise was sixteen years old, she'd ruined her grades to help him care for Lola; when she was seventeen, she'd broken her religious vows to give herself to him; now, at thirty, she was destroying herself, her own instincts of self-preservation and morality, just to be near him.

Strong arms wrapped around her, yanking her close. With intentional hesitation, he placed one bare palm flat against her cheek. Louise closed her eyes immediately, shutting the Joker out of her vision so that she was free to _feel_ – and he felt just like Jack. His hand was callused in places, skin dry and soft, the shape of it conforming exactly to the contours of her face. In that moment, with her eyes closed and the smell of her old room tickling at her nose, Louise could not distinguish between the man touching her and the man who had touched her. Every inch of him underneath of that suit, of that makeup, was the same – Jack was there, he was alive, perhaps more alive than she herself was. More alive than Lola. More alive than Rachel Dawes and Harvey Dent and Sara Burton and that poor, limbless child –

"Don't _touch_ me!" she hissed. Fingernails bit into her cheek; reflexively, Louise reached up to wrench his arm away. The Joker simply laughed at this foolish attempt and dragged her closer.

"Hey, hey! Maybe you haven't _heard_, but it's cruel to be a tease . . . I mean, what's with all the _mixed_ signals, hmm? Don't you . . . want this?"

The trail his fingers made down her neck and across the hollow of her throat left Louise feeling dizzy and ashamed. Years ago, they'd stood in this room just like this, his arms wrapped around her, his voice whispering breathy, aching promises into her ear, into her heart.

Once, perhaps in the midst of the great loneliness, longing, and vulnerability he felt in the days preceding Lola's death, Jack had whispered "forever" – just a single word, scarcely uttered. It had meant so much. Louise had never believed it would mean this. This vicious cycle, the self-loathing, the disgust. The Joker wouldn't let her go because she knew too much, and Louise wouldn't let him go because his skin smelled just like the boy who'd promised her everything, right in this very room.

Forever.

"I don't want you. Not like that. _Never_ like that."

His naked fingertips brushed along the lopsided V of her blouse, the button torn and dangling by a single silver thread, and then froze. Louise cast her defiant eyes up and met his gaze.

She almost managed to quell the nervous trembling of her limbs when she realized he was smiling down at her. Her blood froze in her veins.

"We'll see."

He let her go without another word, striding from the room. Louise stood in the hollowness of her old bedroom, the bedroom she'd shared with her first lover, her first love, and she trembled.

* * *

He left for twenty minutes about an hour later, and Louise was only just contemplating making a run for it when he slammed the front door open and strode back inside. He carried a long, flat rectangular box under his arm and he had half a giant pretzel sticking out of his mouth.

The Joker tossed the box onto the floor in front of her and then took a huge bite out of the pretzel. Louise stared at the crumpled, sad-looking box in apprehension for a whole minute before the Joker rolled his eyes and yanked the lid off himself.

Inside there was an article of clothing - bright, vivid red and satiny. Louise stared up at the Joker, who seemed completely unconcerned with the absurdity of his gift as he chewed ravenously on his snack. Adequately intrigued, Louise knelt down and picked up the garment. It unfolded in front of her gently, slithering softly into its full form.

The dress looked – cheap. That was the only word that came to Louise's mind, and she came to the quick conclusion that it was an adequate one. It was short and clingy, made of a grainy fabric that showed imperfections even in this dim lighting. The straps were thin and the neckline straight and low. This was a whore's dress.

"What is this?"

The Joker swallowed and then replied sardonically, "It's your ball gown, Cinderella. Time to kiss a _prince_."

"Excuse me?"

"You didn't think I brought you here for _nothing_?" The Joker _tsked_ at Louise's stricken, insulted expression. "I've got a little . . . job . . . for you."

It was like her body had plummeted into a tank of freezing, icy water. Of course there was a catch, of course. She'd known it would come to this, hadn't she? All those weeks he'd come to her apartment, examining her carved flesh and broken fingers? She'd been waiting for the other shoe to drop for a long time now, and yet for some reason she was caught off guard? Louise was ashamed of herself, ashamed of the aching feeling of betrayal that accompanied every curve ball the Joker threw at her. She should be _better_ at this by now, dammit. She should _understand_ him better.

When he brought them here, it had shaken her. Those tiny gestures, the moments when the cruel lines in his face softened . . . her mind changed about him constantly, swiftly, because she _wanted_ Jack to still be there, still be savable.

Louise knew the only way she'd ever break free of this cycle, break free of the Joker, was to accept the fact, finally and surely, that he and Jack Napier were one and the same, and she was never going to get the man she loved back because he no longer existed as that man.

Easier said than done.

"What are you using me for?" Louise asked shakily, bunching up the cheap fabric in her hands.

"Hush's men are having a little get-together. Tonight. _You_ are going to doll up and work some magic on one of his boys. I need information. Locations."

"And I have to dress up like a two-bit whore to get information?"

"They're _goons_. They aren't interested in, uh, stimulating _conversation_."

The wicked inflection in his voice left little to the imagination; Louise understood exactly what her part was in this twisted charade of his.

"Christ, you want me _sleep _with one of them?" The Joker simply laughed at the horrified expression on her face.

"Oh-ho! You have _morals_ now?"

"Fuck you, Jack. There is _no_ way I'm sleeping with one of the thugs who would have blown my head off this morning if–"

The Joker rolled his eyes and turned his back on her furious diatribe, uninterested in her protests. Louise's face flushed hotly in embarrassment and anger; she couldn't believe, after all he put her through for sleeping with those other men, that he'd allow something like this. It was a slap in the face – her worth to him, now, was clear.

She meant nothing.

Irrational anger washed over her, along with the strong desire to make the Joker rue the moment he thought he could pawn her body off to other men for his own gain. He wasn't her _pimp_ for God's sake. She was thirty fucking years old, and a couple of hours ago she'd had a well-paying, respectable job.

But if he wanted to play it like this, Louise damn well could.

Fighting back the angry tears that were filling up in her eyes, Louise snatched up the dress box and said, "Fine! I'll go to that depraved party and get cozy with Hush's thugs. I mean, it's been a while since I got some anyway, so why not?"

The Joker cast her an inscrutable look, and though Louise couldn't decipher what he was feeling by examining his stoic visage, she was bolstered that she had gotten a reaction out of him at all. He'd turned to look at her, at least.

"Maybe I'll tell him all about you and beg him to take me away."

The Joker simply smiled at her, as if her little threats amused him greatly.

"Go shower. We don't have much time," was all he said in response, and then once again turned away from her, this time exiting the apartment completely and slamming the door behind him.

Louise, deflating visibly after the Joker left, felt weak. She was still in shock from the events that had taken place earlier in the day – all her coworkers, bosses, dead – and now the Joker was having her do _this_?

The worst of it was, Louise wasn't hurt by the fact that he was using her in his plans. For a long time, she'd known something like this would happen. She had figured, perhaps somewhat arrogantly, that the Joker would use her as bait for Batman, who still hadn't appeared. But for him to cast her off on petty thugs, criminals in the employ of a man he hated? For him to use her, for _Jack_ to use her, as a sexual device to simply get information? It was unthinkable. Louise felt like crying, she was so insulted.

The pain she felt, though, only served to make her feel worse.

Tossing the cheap dress down onto the floor, Louise wiped at her eyes and decided a shower might actually be a good idea. Her body was filthy, after all, covered in dirt, blood, and sweat. Cleansing herself of the first part of this day could only improve her mood. Feeling morose, Louise stripped down on her way to her old bathroom, the only room in the apartment she had yet to examine. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this room was one of the only rooms that seemed inhabited. There was a solitary towel tossed over the shower rod; Louise reached out and touched the thin fabric, the slightest bit damp from whenever the Joker had last used this place.

Forcing herself to ignore the image of the Joker, unclothed and bare of face paint, that popped into her mind, Louise finished shedding her clothes and stepped into the shower. Small bottles of shampoo – most nearly empty – were scattered across all the surfaces; a bar of soap sat next to a container of some sort of heavy-duty makeup remover and a washcloth smeared with faded white greasepaint.

She sighed deeply as she turned on the water, fingers trailing idly over the Joker's face wash. Louise would do anything, give anything, to see him without that paint. A part of her almost longed for the mask to come off and reveal that he wasn't Jack at all – just some psychopath who wanted to mentally torture a poor woman. It would simplify things so much.

The water pipes groaned and shook when Louise finally started her shower; it took a full minute for water to burst out of the shower head in irregular, rusty-looking spurts. The truly surprising thing was that running water was still connected to this building at all, though Louise supposed connecting a building to the city's water supply was one of the Joker's easier tasks.

Once immersed in thick steam and scalding droplets, Louise cast her thoughts back to what she was tasked with doing, tonight. She could run, of course. Something told her that the Joker wasn't far off, and that if she made a break for it he'd undoubtedly catch her. Then again, he could have completely vacated the building for the time being, trusting in the fact that Louise was far too attached to him to leave. Though this thought rankled, Louise had to admit that she hadn't done much to prove him wrong. Even tonight, nauseated as it made her feel, seemed impossible to prevent. The fact remained that, if her worth to the Joker had truly decreased to such a degree, there was absolutely no reason for him to keep her alive once she became unmanageable or resistant. What if she put her foot down and absolutely refused to go through with this, tonight? On what, principle? It wasn't as if she hadn't slept with random men who meant nothing to her in the past. And what if, because of her stubborn defiance, the Joker shot her? Or worse, tortured her to death?

The threat she'd made to the Joker about using this opportunity to leave him, to escape, wasn't a bad one, either. Who better to help her get away from a madman than his current rival? Hush would be only too glad to steal away one of the Joker's assets, if for no other reason than to piss him off. And from there? Tennessee, with Mollie, maybe even back to France. And if that was too predictable then Monaco, Yemen if necessary.

Feeling a bit better about this situation, Louise finished bathing and then stepped out of the shower, wrapping the Joker's towel tightly around her body. His scent was everywhere, hanging in the warm bathroom steam and clinging to the fabric of the towel enfolding her. With determined eyes, Louise stared at her reflection in the cracked bathroom mirror. She would go through with this tonight. An hour of discomfort and shame would be worth the lifetime of freedom she'd gain. Because there was no way she was coming back to this place, back to the Joker, after this. No way she was giving him the satisfaction. If anything, she would slip out unnoticed before even going through with the act and run to the first airport she could find. Her last paycheck might be enough to get her to Tennessee; if not, Mollie could always be counted on to deposit a few hundred bucks into her bank account.

Louise nodded firmly at her reflection and then turned and exited the bathroom, grabbing up her scattered clothing as she went.

She ran straight into the Joker as she emerged from the darkened hallway; he was standing next to the kitchen counter with a pair of stilettos in one hand and tights in another. Louise gaped at him.

"Suit u_p_," he said casually, completely ignoring the fact that she was standing half naked in front of him. Louise curled her lip at him and snatched the heels and tights from his hands.

It wasn't until she turned around to pick up the dress she'd thrown aside that he grabbed her by her waist and kissed her throat. Caught off guard, Louise stumbled back against him, too shocked to make a sound, even as his hand – bare, once again – ghosted over the sharp angles of her hip. Louise knew she ought to push him away, especially after the way he was treating her, after what he'd demanded she do tonight.

But his hand felt so . . . perfect. It felt right for him to touch her. It felt long overdue.

This close, Louise could see so much more of his skin, a shade darker than her own, despite how little sun he got. She could feel every notch and scar on his slender fingers, could pinpoint, even, which was roughest – the right index. His trigger finger. When they'd dated, a century ago, Louise had noticed this on the lazy afternoons he'd spent exploring her body. Back then, she hadn't realized what it was from; now, she wasn't so naive.

"Jack . . ." she murmured, and she wanted to finished her thought, only she didn't know how. Could she really ask him to stop? Could she bear to beg him to keep touching her?

Louise took in a shaky breath to speak, to say whatever it was that she wanted him to do – and then she screamed as his long, slender fingers wrapped around something sharp he'd hidden up his sleeve and plunged it into the soft, sensitive skin of her bottom.

The Joker held her fast against him, long enough for Louise to realize that he had stabbed her with a syringe, of all things, and was injecting her with something. Fear ripped through her and she struggled against him, desperate to get out of his clutches before he finished the job. There could be any number of deadly things in that syringe – poison, dangerous chemicals, disease agents. Louise pictured herself dying a slow, agonizing death, withering from the inside out . . . in the same way Lola had.

Finally, his arms slackened, and Louise managed to tumble out of his grasp.

"What the _hell_ did you just inject into me?" Louise rasped, voice raw. She was too horrified and afraid for her own health to comprehend the Joker's own disheveled and discomfited appearance. He wasn't laughing, and the look in his eyes wasn't one of triumph or glee at having embarrassed her once again.

A muscle in his jaw tightened; there was a long pause before he spoke. When he did, his voice had the low timber Louise remembered from years ago.

"Let's just call it . . . Somber Serum."

Louise decided she didn't want to know what he meant.


	31. Chapter 31

**A/N: **WHOA, guys - not feeling that last chapter, huh? There was a very noticeable dip in reviews, but perhaps that was what the writing deserved - it felt sort of lost, even to me. But, I gotta say . . . I like this one. I hope you all will also appreciate it, and PLEASE leave reviews. You have no idea how much they motivate me. On that note, shout-out to all my reviewers who have been faithfully reviewing every chapter! And another great huzzah! for **wbss21 **for incredibly discerning and thoughtful reviews. I swear I'm gonna reply personally to your reviews, but this chapter kind of just took me over all of a sudden and I had to get it out.

This is a long one, but trust me - you're gonna wanna stick around to the end.

* * *

_Choices are the hinges of destiny._

_~ Pythagoras_

* * *

There was nothing for her here.

Louise stood in the midst of a smoky rec room, leaning casually against a wall and taking drags of a cigarette she'd bummed off of a beautiful African American girl – where the woman was _carrying_ the things, she had no idea, considering she'd been wearing nothing more than a yellow G-string and beads in her hair. In fact, looking around, Louise could definitively confirm that she was wearing the most clothes of any woman in the room. Her skimpy, cheap red dress and tights were _modest_ in this den of debauchery.

Exhaling moodily, Louise reflected on her situation. Obviously, the Joker had meant for this to happen – her absolute humiliation, that is. Tricking her way into the place had been a piece of cake. One smooth lie about being a special treat from the Madam, just back from France, and a purr of French words that meant absolutely nothing and she was in. Just as he'd instructed her, gloved hands brushing over her bare shoulders and then gripping down hard in exactly the right place to make it hurt. Her attendance hadn't been optional, and yet her role in this charade was completely unclear.

On the one hand, he'd taken the time to dress her up, make it believable that she was expected at this thing, this celebration of sorts. God, maybe that was all it was – yet another form of torture. To be standing in this place, eye candy for these men, the men who had stormed her workplace earlier that _day_ and blown two-thirds of her coworkers away. It would have been her. Louise scanned the room with hooded eyes, seeking dark forms through the smoke.

Which one would it have been? Which man would have taken her life?

It could be anyone, really. That was the point. She was surrounded on all sides by her murderers. Another life, another choice that she'd made, and she wouldn't even be here. These men would have killed her.

And then what?

No cigarette in her hand, no pawn shop dress scratching away at her skin, no Joker waiting in the wings for her to rush back to him _again_, because that was the only goddamn thing Louise knew how to do, anymore.

Another choice, just a split second decision, and she might not exist at all. If all that God nonsense was right, she might have passed into the Great Beyond.

If the latter was true, Louise was Hell bound for certain. How did one go about explaining the Joker to Jesus?

But, it wasn't like it even mattered. Fate, blind luck, the Powers That Be – whoever or whatever had been at work that morning had saved her skin, and here she stood, blowing out smoke and perfecting her nonchalant stance in a room full of killers who she found a thousand times more abhorrent than the one who'd brought her here.

With a disgusted flick, Louise discarded her cigarette and smashed out its flame with her heel.

The Joker hadn't given her much to go on, as information went. He'd informed her of the location, some ramshackle building on the edges of town that used to be an operating dentist's office before Jonathan Crane's fear toxin had torn the Narrows apart. Now the edge of the city closest to the Narrows was operating as Gotham's stand-in ghetto. Offices like this one were shut down, apartments over the businesses were going cheap, and crime ran rampant in the streets.

Desperation and poverty were bleeding outwards, infecting the city like a plague. Somehow, Louise felt something like . . . vindication. As if the people of Gotham deserved this for letting the Narrows exist as it was for so long, with minimal interference from any kind of authority. How many Lolas might not have died if there had been more compassion? How many Jacks would have walked away unscarred?

Men like these existed because Gotham bred them, created a niche for them that they filled out of necessity or greed.

And what about the men? The Joker had filled her in on them as well, albeit sketchily. Some were petty crooks before this job, many of whom had never taken a life before. Hush employed men like this, the Joker said, because he was new to the game. They were liabilities, quick to crack when interrogated. She could see some of them through the clouds of smoke, resting their heads in their hands, knuckles clenched white around their glasses of scotch. Hush had paid them well, enough money to convince men with clean hands to bloody them up, enough incentive to commit acts that would haunt their dreams.

Hush, the Joker had told her, had never stolen any money.

Which means he already _had_ it.

Louise recognized immediately the mistake the villain had made; the Joker was out for blood, now, and Hush was an amateur who'd left clues like breadcrumbs in his wake.

This party, for instance, and her traitorous presence here. The small, round pill Louise had hidden in the detachable bottom of her lipstick tube. The unattended glass of Hush's main thug, a clear vodka liquid that Louise could only identify by taste and not by sight. It hadn't mattered. She'd slipped the drug into his drink twenty minutes ago. It hadn't killed him, incapacitated him, or harmed him in any noticeable way. For all Louise could tell, it might as well have been made of sugar.

Thus, her uselessness. The maddening uncertainty of her place in this plan.

There was absolutely nothing that she had done that the Joker couldn't have. Louise's presence was unnecessary, even ridiculous. He'd said he'd wanted information, locations, some kind of clue as to where Hush would be at a certain point in time. She'd dressed as a whore to slip the one man who would be able to tell her these things a seemingly ineffective pill.

That was it. The Joker had become tight-lipped and irritable when Louise had questioned him further, desperately searching for some kind of assurance that he wouldn't _actually_ make her sleep with one of these men.

Except now, there was no reason to. Even if that's what the Joker _had_ intended for her, it was a superfluous action. She didn't know what the pill did, but it hadn't incapacitated their target in any way. Her wildest guess – that it might be some sort of truth-telling agent – was proved false the minute she overheard the man bragging about his dick size to a woman Louise could have sworn was the daughter of Gotham's former mayor.

Eleven inches, her ass.

Just being in this place sickened her, and the fact that she was standing there for nothing made it even worse. The Joker had won. He hadn't planned on using her for anything; it was just another of his games. And she had fallen for it, once again.

Louise turned towards the door and took one step before freezing in her tracks. Through the smoke and the liquor-slurred rumblings of speech she heard the one word that could stop her short.

_Joker_.

Heart thumping wildly in her chest, Louise tried not to panic. Visions of her discovery flashed through her mind, each one bloodier and more painful than the last. If they had somehow found out she was here at the Joker's request, that she'd slipped one of them something for him . . . She was absolutely defenseless.

Ears straining, Louise stood and listened.

"You don't think he's gonna come after us, then? After Hush? I mean, he's one sick bastard . . . The things he's done . . ."

Her body almost wept with relief. They didn't know. The Joker had come up in casual conversation, an object of uncertainty and fear. Of course he would – these men had practically spat in his face earlier that day. The ones with any sense at all would doubtlessly be questioning whether or not the clown would want retribution.

Interest piqued, Louise strolled over to the ring of men and call girls taking part in the conversation. None of them paid her any notice. Louise tried her hardest to ignore the presence of the man she'd slipped the pill to. His name was Alex Ramie, a handsome man in his mid thirties with a penchant for sadism and torture that his previous job as an actuary couldn't quite satisfy. The white band on his left ring finger let Louise know that, once, perhaps even presently, he had a wife.

Alex Ramie didn't approve of the Joker as an object of fearful speculation.

"_You_ tell me what he's done that's worse than what _we_ did today? You know Hush would have your nuts in his hand if he could see the way you pussies are pissing yourselves over the _Joker_. Christ, did we or did we not one-up him?"

A couple men made raucous sounds of approval, but the majority looked utterly spooked, as if they didn't dare toast a man at odds with the Joker – as if it was pushing their already thinning luck.

A blonde girl in a very flimsy piece of lingerie tossed her hair and replied, "Hey, you guys are bosses, all right? I'm just saying, have any of _you_ ever broke out of _Arkham_? From the maximum security ward?"

There was a collective hush from the group. Louise let her eyes flicker from man to the next. The blonde was obviously the one who had brought up the conversation, and to her credit she didn't seem in the least intimidated by the ugly gash of a scowl gracing Ramie's features.

"He had help," Ramie replied angrily. "It wasn't a fucking _miracle_."

"What? Like, one little intern that nobody has ever _seen_ again? And they don't even know if she helped him, they just know that her body is _gone_, and there hasn't been a _word_ of her since the night he escaped. If you ask me," the blonde looked around at the guys and twirled one platinum strand of hair between her fingers, "she's locked up with him, and he uses her as his own little sex slave."

The blonde let this racy piece of speculation settle in the crowd, an expression of self-satisfaction on her face for being so brilliant as to come up with such a proposition.

"Not like that freak could get anything else, right? Talk about fuckin' _creepy_."

Louise wasn't certain where the murmur had come from, but many of the men let out tiny scoffs of laughter at the comment. Feeling lightheaded and conspicuous, Louise slunk away, making her exit as quietly as possible. She slipped through the first door she saw, set back at the far end of the room. It turned out to be a small sitting area with almost nothing more than boxy television set, DVD player, and a couch with its stuffing bursting out of its cushions inside.

It was pathetic that the mere mention of the Joker's name had sent her into such a terrified fit; her legs didn't even feel as though they could support her weight. Loath as she was to sit on the mangy couch, Louise flopped down and buried her face into her hands.

What was she _doing_? Here, at this party . . . . but beyond that, as well. What was she _doing_, hanging around the Joker, just hoping that a boy who'd died a long time ago would miraculously reappear?

And because of this, because she was fucking _insane_, she was sitting in a musty old room with porn DVDs and magazines littering the floor in front of her. Louise snatched up a magazine at the top of the pile just to give her hands something to do and flipped through the risque pages with a curled upper lip.

After a few minutes of disgusted page-turning, Louise's hands stopped shaking. She threw the magazine to her side where it landed, face-down and open on the floor. From its center a small, wrinkled piece of paper fluttered out and landed on the dark carpet.

One choice, one split second of decision making. Her boss's anal coffee demands had saved her life earlier that day. Something entirely less understandable made her reach out and grab that piece of paper, which turned out to be a yellowing photograph, a well-worn crease zig-zagging down its center.

On the back, there was a single line of writing scrawled:

_Tommy and Peyton, '93_

Heart in her throat, Louise flipped over the photograph. A smiling, well-groomed young man was lounging at the edge of a pool in swim trunks, long arms folded behind his head. His face was familiar – less lined, less troubled, more youthful – and his hair was thicker and darker than it was in the tabloids, but Louise recognized him. Just as she recognized the woman lounging next to him, separated by the jagged crease where the men had folded the photograph in half.

Next to Thomas Elliot, Bruce Wayne's chummy new best friend, was deceased mob princess Peyton Riley.

She was nothing like Louise had ever seen her. Riley's face was beautiful and glowing, her body stretched out like a bronzed goddess's in a tiny string bikini. Every inch of her screamed of youth and vitality. Even the trademark haughty smirk on her face was different. She looked happy and privileged. She practically glowed.

Throat tight, Louise checked the scrawl on the back again. Tommy and Peyton, '93. Jack had been at the tail end of twelve years old that summer; she had just turned thirteen. She'd just met Jack and Lola when this photograph was taken. Somewhere in the Palisades, Peyton Riley had stretched out at the side of a pool, around three years away from the day she would step into a butcher's shop in the Narrows and meet Jack Napier behind the counter. Somewhere_ in_ the Narrows, Lola had been alive, undergoing her first round of chemotherapy and radiation. Jack had been young and sometimes, when she tried, Louise would get him to laugh – really laugh, without that hard bitter edge that accompanied most of his smirks and chuckles. He would come up to her room with bruises on his face, and she would pretend not to notice them.

Somewhere in the Narrows, Louise Speller had lulled herself to sleep with silly, childish dreams of a Happily Ever After, and white wedding dresses, and thoughts of kissing her charming, cynical friend Jack.

"Nice, huh?"

Half blinded by the tears swimming in her eyes, Louise leapt to her feet, photograph clutched in her hands as she faced the intruder.

Alex Ramie crossed his arms over his chest and gave her an easy smile, "Relax, babe. It isn't a crime to look at a little porn. Kinda sexy, actually."

"I –"

It was useless to refute him, after all, and even if she'd wanted to, Louise didn't think she had the mental acuity to commit to such a task. All she could think about was the photograph she held, and 1993, and what the hell Peyton Riley was doing in a string bikini next to Thomas Elliot.

"That's a little something we found when we were cleaning out the building," Ramie offered, sidling over to her side and pointing down at Riley's tan, gleaming form. "She's really something, isn't she? Tucked away in some folder full of tax returns." Ramie snorted derisively. "Their loss. Some of the boys call her our angel – you know, like she was giving us her blessing to use the building. It's dumb, I know."

Louise glanced down again at Riley, her hair a golden mass of shining curls around her head, that inscrutable smile on her face.

"But what was it doing here? Isn't this Thomas Elliot?"

Louise pointed down at the man. Ramie shrugged.

"Sure, but we're not looking at _him_. He used to own the place; let some friend of his run his dentist's office on the ground floor. Hell if I know why it was there."

Louise said nothing. Somewhere in the back of her muddled mind the pieces were coming together, snapping into place. Alex Ramie reached out and stroked his large fingers down her neck, sweeping her dark hair over her shoulder. She could hardly breathe.

Outside of their room, Louise could hear uproarious laughter; the party was in the midst of an upswing, apparently, probably brought on by just enough booze and the tranquilizing balm of naked women. Ramie glanced negligently towards the door and then turned his hooded eyes back on her.

"You know you're the only woman in that room that left anything to the imagination?"

Her palms were beginning to sweat, and she feared for the photograph she held – it had quickly become the most precious thing that she owned. Louise hadn't kept pictures of Jack or Lola, not one, because seeing their faces had been too hard, and by the time she'd longed for the sight of them they were six feet under the earth in Jack's empty coffin. Having Peyton Riley's picture was like having a window into an alternate dimension, a place where all their mistakes hadn't happened yet, and there was still so much _time._

A different time and place, where Lola wasn't dead and Jack wasn't ruined and some murdering thug didn't have his hands around her waist.

"You're like a present," he murmured. "Sometimes the best part is the unwrapping."

The shrieks of laughter from the rec room were growing louder, now, and even through her terror and disgust, Louise felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She felt Ramie's shiver, sweeping through his muscle-laden frame, and they both looked towards the door at the same moment.

That laughter wasn't the laughter of drunken revelry. It was deranged, almost desperate, shrieking that went on and on in one unbroken strain; high-pitched, horrible screeches that raked across Louise's skin.

Ramie, his eyes wide and furious, stormed towards the door and barreled out into the hall, turning the corner and disappearing from sight. Seconds later, Louise heard him hacking, coughing and wheezing as if choking on thin air. Screams filled the room, but they were dying down, and in their wake their was a chilling silence that spoke of eternal stillness – death.

Louise gripped the photograph tightly in her hand. Then, she ran.

The rec room was a graveyard of horrors, thugs and whores sprawled out in the midst of their party, eyes wide open and glassy, looks of terror on their faces. Their mouths were open and paralyzed in a horrifying smile, some mouths bloody from biting their tongue clean in half in the midst of their mirthful spasms. Some that were still living were laughing feebly, their bodies jerking, failing them bit by bit; they reached out to Louise with desperate hands as she staggered around the bodies, tears in her eyes. The smoke hanging in the air had taken on a sickly pallor, a greenish hue that reminded her, somehow, of exploding buildings and ash and Sara Burton's crushed body and a limbless child . . .

Every breath she allowed herself to take burned her throat as if she were inhaling gaseous acid; she'd passed Ramie stretched out on the floor, a victim of the gas. Terrified of what might happen to her if she inhaled even one more mouthful of that toxic air, Louise held her breath and hurtled towards the closest exit, stumbling and nearly twisting her ankle as she tripped over the beautiful girl who had given her a cigarette.

Hand over her mouth and nose, Louise pushed her way into the stairwell and forced the heavy door shut behind her. She wrenched off her heels and tossed them aside, taking the stairs down two at a time and nearly breaking her neck in the process.

Louise didn't allow herself to take a real breath until she fell out into the alley behind the building. She drew in great mouthfuls of air until her head was swimming. Every clench of her gut or tickle in her throat felt like a fit of laughter bursting to come out. In the back of her mind, Louise pictured that deep box, the bat inside, and George's appalled face as he saw the paralyzed form, the grinning mouth . . .

It was the Joker's toxin. Of course.

The plan had never been for her to sleep with any of those men. He had wanted her there so she could watch them die, drop like flies around her. And he'd put her in that deathtrap because . . . . because for her it hadn't been a deathtrap. Because he'd held her against him and pierced her with a syringe full of "Somber Serum" and ensured she'd witness everything and make it out alive.

Eyes stinging from smoke and tears, Louise pulled herself up off the ground and straightened out the photograph she still held. Her tights had torn up the left leg, clean up to her scarred thigh.

Skirting carefully through the alley, Louise made her way to the back of the building where a town car with smoked windows was waiting, the trunk popped.

Alex Ramie's still breathing body was bound and gagged in the back. His eyes were open and searching frantically. The minute he saw her he began to scream low in his throat, a muffled sound that hardly carried. He thrashed about and made jerking gestures with his head at her, practically begging her to release him, quickly.

Louise didn't question why he was still alive. She knew. She'd slipped an unmarked pill into his alcohol, and apparently that was enough.

Jack had always been so brilliant at chemistry.

She didn't even flinch when the Joker approached her from behind, shoes crunching gravel and glass beneath the soles. Ramie was almost in conniptions, flailing about wildly as the steps came closer.

The Joker put one hand on her shoulder, one on the trunk. Ramie's eyes bulged and flickered between them – the Joker, Louise, the Joker, Louise – and then he moaned low in his throat. The minute realization struck Ramie, the Joker slammed the trunk closed.

* * *

"What are you going to do with him?"

She sat in the middle of Jack's old living room in her torn tights and dirty dress, cradling a cup of black coffee that was too bitter to drink. The Joker had practically inhaled three cups and was working on his fourth.

The thought struck her that she'd never seen the Joker sleep, and he rarely appeared tired.

"_Oh_, the usual. Bamboo shoots and hot pokers. _Bro_ken glass and wire cutters."

Louise grimaced. "Because you want him to tell you who Hush is?"

"Not _who_ he is. Where he'll _be_." The Joker rummaged through the pockets of his overcoat and extracted a pair of wicked looking pliers that he examined minutely before placing them aside. "There's only one mask in Gotham I wanna rip off. And it's no_t_ his."

The grim set of his mouth was back, and the wild, passionate flashing of his eyes that could only mean he was thinking of Batman.

"Why did you make me go there, tonight?" Even to her ears, her voice sounded small and weak. "It wasn't necessary. Those people . . ."

"_I_ didn't make you do anything. You _chose_ to go to that place tonight." He smacked his lips together in finality, as if his short, cryptic excuses were the answer for everything.

"Oh, right," Louise scoffed. "And what if I'd said 'no'? What if I left, instead?"

"You'd be dead."

"So you _made_ me go," she said hotly, taking a deep gulp of her coffee just to have something to do with her shaking hands and then instantly regretting it.

The Joker let out a hoot of laughter at her twisted face and snatched the coffee away from her, spilling quite a bit of it onto the already stained carpet in the process.

"There, _that_, that's your problem. See? Because you don't und-er-stand _choice_. You chose to go and watch those people die instead of dying yourself. There is no wrong or, uh, _right_. No moral or _im_moral. No – no – good or bad. There's what you do . . . and what you don't. And you have to live with every . . . little . . . choice. Forever." He thought for a second and then added, wickedly, "Or not."

He raised his eyebrows suggestively and then made a violent slashing motion across his throat. Louise felt her stomach drop.

"All those people that you kill don't have a _choice_," Louise replied acerbically. "Harvey Dent – "

The Joker held out a finger to silence her and said, "The Bat Man chose to save Harvey Dent and let Miss Dawes . . . uh . . ." He clenched his hands into fists and then uncurled them, stretching outwards, miming an explosion. "I _gave_ Bats everything he needed to know. And as for _their_ choices? Well. Stuff like that? It's in the job description."

The world-weary shrug of his shoulders stretched his vest taut over his chest, and Louise felt more unsettled than ever. With knitted brows, Louise turned her face from him. Silently, she commanded herself to keep looking away, to ignore the dark blonde roots showing at the crown of his head, to disregard the smoothness of his paint-smeared fingers.

"See, bad things are gonna happen, whether they like it or not. And_ I'm _just here . . . to speed things up. A catalyst. Because without _me . . . _who would ever know what kinda person they _really_ are?"

She looked up at his painted face, eyes alight with a mania she couldn't understand. It was beyond her. _He_ was beyond her. Louise thought of the picture she'd kept carefully hidden in her dress. It was pressed against her breast, and with every heartbeat she could feel its papery softness.

There were so many things she'd still had when that picture was taken. There was so much possibility. Unbidden, memories flashed on the backs of her eyelids, choppy bits of the past, before everything had gone to hell.

Lola, blowing bubbles into the wind, a scarf around her head.

Her mother placing a cool hand on her forehead one night, when she thought Louise was sleeping.

St. Katherine's, and her constricting uniform, and the way she'd skip classes with Sydney White, sneaking to the bathroom and sitting near the window as the other girl smoked and talked.

Jack.

The dimples in his cheeks as he smiled, so wide it almost felt like it should hurt him.

The lanky expanse of his limbs, sprawled out next to her in sleep.

The lazy afternoons when they made love; the look on his face just before he came, vulnerable and exposed and _hers_, because that look belonged to no one else.

The rest was too painful to remember right then, with the Joker standing in front of her drinking coffee and looking pleased with himself. He'd just killed fifty people, perhaps more.

And all she wanted to do was touch him.

_Without _me_ . . . who would ever know what kinda person they _really _are?_

What did that make Louise, then?

"You're forcing people into extreme situations. The choices they make don't reflect who they are, they reflect what you've _made_ them."

The Joker smiled slowly, as if she'd said exactly what he wanted her to say all along.

"Extreme situations _are_ what define them. It's easy to make the 'right' choices when you've got ev-er-y-thing you wan_t_." One cheek bulged outwards as his tongue probed at his scars. "The money, the fame, the, uh, _lover_. What-ever's most _dear_. Take it away, and . . . that's when we show ourselves. _That's_ when we make the choices that de_fine_ us."

There was something shadowed lurking behind his eyes, something dark and gravelly in his deepened voice. Eyes narrowed, Louise studied the Joker intently as he tossed his overcoat aside and leaned his lanky body against the wall nearest her. An air of exhaustion hung on him like a blanket, and yet his fingers reached out and drummed an antsy rhythm against the coffee cup he held. In between the sharp taps, Louise saw his little finger shaking.

"D'ya wanna know what it takes to ruin a man, Louise?"

Something unexplainable in his aura, in the lines of his body, in the pitch of his voice, devastated Louise. She found that she couldn't speak, that she could feel the photograph of Peyton Riley's flawless beach body burning against her skin like hot coals. Instinctively, she brought up her hand to where it was hidden and clenched the folds of her dress into her fist.

The Joker was still waiting for her to respond in some way, to recognize what he'd said and commit herself to an answer. The muscles in her neck felt rusty and unused as she shook her head.

"One. Bad. _Day_."

The Joker let his words sink in, finishing off the rest of Louise's coffee and then tossing the cup aside negligently. It fell to the soiled carpet, the handle chipping on impact.

Immediately, Louise saw flashes of her dreams: Jack, bloody and helpless and at the mercy of Johnny Sabatino, getting torn apart by faceless mobsters.

He didn't wait for her to respond to this; instead, he gathered up the tools he'd extracted from his coat and turned towards the door. Somewhere in the building the Joker had tied up Alex Ramie and left him, soiled and bloody, to await his grisly fate.

Louise did not speak up because she feared for Alex Ramie's well-being, or cared for his life, or cared for Hush's life. She spoke up because the thought of sitting in Jack's apartment while he tortured a man to death was unbearable to her.

"Don't go." The Joker stopped with his bare hand outstretched, fingers brushing the door handle. He didn't turn around; the rigid stillness of his body let her know that he was at least listening.

"I . . . I found something. Before . . ." Her throat went dry as she thought of the carnage the Joker had left in his wake. Louise forced herself to push the memory away and continue. "I think I know who Hush is."

She had his attention, now. The Joker rounded on her slowly, his eyes narrowed but intrigued.

With shaking fingers, Louise reached into the bust of her dress and pulled out the photograph. A desperate desire to hold onto it, to tuck it away before the Joker could see it and, somehow, _contaminate _it, pierced her. Quickly, Louise shook away this weakness, thrusting out her arm and relinquishing the photo, and with it, her nostalgia for a past long buried.

The Joker snatched the picture from her hand; Louise watched, barely breathing, as his dark eyes flickered over the words on the back and then, flipping the photograph, absorbed the unbelievable image in front of him.

Louise imagined his expression mirrored her own when she first found the photograph – his eyebrows raised dramatically, a flash of what looked like surprise flickering through his inscrutable eyes, warping as the seconds ticked by into what could only be described as dawning triumph.

"Well, _well_," the Joker breathed, a twisted grin spreading across his features. "Keep your friends close . . ."

Louise picked at the skin around her cuticles absently, feeling the loss of the photograph acutely. Already, she was praying the Joker didn't destroy the picture – it was the only tie she had left to the past she loved.

"He owned that building with some dentist friend of his," Louise repeated Ramie's revelation to the Joker softly. "Ramie told me it was tucked away in some folder with papers they shredded; probably stuff with his name on it. They couldn't have known they kept something even more incriminating . . . They don't seem to have made the connection."

Immediately, the air thickened with tension. The Joker clenched his hand around the photograph, crumpling it into a tiny ball in his fist.

"_Who_ told you?"

Louise felt her body recoil, crumpling in on itself, as if by making herself smaller she could somehow become inconspicuous. She realized her mistake, now – the object had never been for her to sleep with any of those men, despite her misconceptions, and she had just let the Joker know that, for some space of time, she had been alone with Alex Ramie, and that he'd told her something not many outsiders knew.

"R-Ramie," Louise stammered, shrinking back as the Joker crouched over her, forcing his furious presence on her. She could smell the coffee on his breath, the tinge of turpentine that clung to the fingers he gripped her shoulders with.

"And why would he tell you something like _that_?"

"It was just – he thought –"

"Mhmm, I see, I see . . . so _you_ . . ." he cradled her face in his hands, but the action didn't feel in the least comforting – instead, Louise feared he would grind her fragile bones into dust if she said the wrong thing. ". . . you don't want me to torture _Alex_ because ya got cozy with him. Hmm? That it?"

"No, I –"

"Maybe you thought he would _protect_ you from me. Didja finish him _before_ the gas, or did I _interrupt _something?"

"I _wouldn't_!" Louise shouted at him; the Joker didn't even blink at her outburst, only dug his nails into her skin.

"Oh _really?_" he drawled, dripping disbelief. "Why no_t_?"

"Because he looks nothing like _you_!" she spat at him, fury coursing through her veins at him for making her speak the words aloud. With a half-sob, Louise flung out her arms and pushed him as hard as she could; he tumbled backwards, elbows reaching out and catching him before his head hit the floor.

Maybe it was the photograph, the way 1993 had blossomed in her mind like it was the first time she'd experienced it, the memory of meeting Jack for the first time. Maybe it was all of it, or maybe it was nothing except her own special brand of sickness that compelled her to reach for him. Her fingers curled around his starched collar, knuckles brushing against the smooth, bare skin of his throat; Louise felt his pulse thrumming against her fingernails as she pulled herself to him. He sat motionless as she kissed his cold, painted lips, moist at the edges where his tongue continually darted out to probe at his scars. There was no response to her gentle kiss, nor to the savage nips she gave in the hopes that he would _do_ something, exhibit some of the same passion she had seen in the back of that van earlier that day.

With a strangled, impatient moan of self-loathing and longing, Louise turned her head away, cheeks flushed with what could be embarrassment or disappointment or both. Her hands were still clutching at him; she could still feel his heartbeat as if they were wired together, one person instead of two.

"I know it was you who called me this morning," Louise whispered, not looking at him. His heart thrummed irregularly though his body remained stoic and unmoving. "I _know_ it was you. You found out Hush was hitting my building, but you couldn't get there in time. You were calling to _warn_ me. And when I didn't pick up, you jumped in that van. When you saw me alive, you were relieved, weren't you, Jack?"

Her eyes met his; she could see the cold fury in them, but still she pressed on. She was hungry for the abandon he'd exhibited earlier that day when he'd kissed her; then, she hadn't wanted it, but seeing Peyton Riley's youthful face had broken something inside of Louise.

Because the Joker was right – it all did come down to choice. If _one_ person had chosen differently, acted differently, eleven years ago, she might be sitting with an entirely different Jack than the one she was now. Maybe he'd be smiling at her, maybe his rugged, handsome face would be unscarred and lined slightly with the beginnings of age. Maybe he'd have a different title, play a different distinct role in her life – perhaps as her husband, or, God, the father of the children she might have had.

_One _thing, _one_ choice, and maybe Jack would have really died the night he got his scars; maybe she'd be in another man's bed, secure and warm and crying inside as she slowly sobered up.

"_Why_ are you still here?" the Joker's voice was gravelly and low, almost resembling a growl. Louise felt her brows knit together at the question.

"What?"

"I _gave_ you an out," the Joker continued. His previously immobile body whipped into action, one hand clenching a fistful of her hair and the other slipping inside of her tights at the tear, tracing the uneven ridges of her slow-healing scar. "_This_. This. I gave it to you as proof. I gave this to you so you could _save_ yourself. Why? _Why did you stay_?"

The police, Louise realized numbly. The Joker was telling her he'd carved that 'J' into her thigh not out of a sense of possession, but because . . . because he wanted to see what choice she would make, what path she would choose.

And she hadn't made the one he had expected.

"Because," Louise felt the words spill from her lips, heard them as if somebody else was uttering them, "because you're the only person left who knows what I used to be."

There, the truth they shared between them – that it was the past, not the horrid distortion of the present, that drew them to one another without fail. Louise didn't stand at his side because she marveled at his brilliance, the absolute finesse in the execution of his plans; she did not respect this man she was touching, did not love him, just as he had no respect or love for the fallen woman he was clutching. They were here in this apartment, a shard of their broken collective past, because eleven years ago they had shared one bad day that had ruined them forever.

Louise didn't flinch when he pushed her away from him, onto the ground, nor was she surprised that he allowed her to pull him with her. Peyton Riley's picture lay in a crumpled ball on the ground several feet away, but Louise knew it had caused this. Eleven years ago, Peyton Riley had come to the door of this very apartment to tell Louise the boy she loved was dead, gone from her forever. Except, Louise trembled, here he was, hands smeared with greasepaint and hiking up her dress to tear off her tights.

She'd given every single modicum of innocence she'd ever had to Jack Napier in some way or another, most of it before she'd turned eighteen and the remnants of it here, now, on the dirty floor of their old apartment. Louise knew that when she opened her eyes the next morning she would be opening them on a different world, on a different person – one who had sinned in a way that could never be forgiven.

The nuns had always told the St. Katherine girls that the worst sins gave the guiltiest pleasure and also the greatest affliction of the soul.

They weren't wrong.

Louise felt as if the very air was crushing her with its weight, heavier and heavier as she reached for the Joker, grasping desperately at his arms, his chest, the sharp angles of his hips, just trying to _feel_ him, Jack, the man she loved.

He was too cruel to let it happen.

It was a struggle between them: Louise would reach out to loosen his tie as he bit into her shoulder; would unclasp a single button of his green vest as he lifted her easily with one arm and reached for the zipper to her dress; would untuck one edge of his patterned shirt and slip her hand underneath, fingers just barely meeting hot, contracting flesh, before he jerked her away and pinned her down.

Again and again and again, until he had her nearly naked in front of him and she had made no progress whatsoever on his state of undress.

There was a shadow of a laugh on his lips.

Louise was almost crying in frustration, combusting on the floor in front of them from arousal and guilt and shame and defeat. Her cheap red dress was crumpled somewhere next to her and she reached for it; he pressed her hand to the floor until she feared he would break her fingers again. Too late, Louise understood her mistake, and the great injustice of a universe that let the man she'd been searching for for more than a decade be the one she could never reach, even when he was on top of her.

She bit her lip and turned her head to the side, breathing raspily; he bit patterns across her neck, leaving the first traces of the bruises that would mar her skin within the next hour. With one hand, he wrenched her face around so that she could see him, exactly as he was. With a quiet cry of despair, Louise met the Joker's unyielding, fiery stare.

A tear gathered at the edge of her eye, dangling precariously on her lashes as she whispered, "You win. You _always_ _win_. I get nothing. Eleven years, and I get _nothing_."

Her desperate plea, the admission of defeat, seemed ineffective. The tear fell, streaking down her cheek; before she could twist away the Joker had already caught it on his tongue, the salty proof of his own domination. His lips lingered on her cheek, just barely grazing the sharpness of her cheekbone. With barely more than a flick of his wrist, the Joker sent her tumbling over, her naked breasts chafing against the rough, dirty carpet. She'd barely had time or strength to pull herself up onto her elbows when she heard the rustle of pressed fabric, the quiet unclasping of a button, the gentle grating of a zipper coming down.

A sob caught in her throat and she was on the point of screaming when he reached out and, with a hand that trembled intentionally, he brushed away her hair from her neck and pressed his lips to the top of her spine.

Her fury and humiliation caught in her throat. Something had shifted, something indefinable yet tangible; she could feel it, as if the atmosphere had rotated around them. Louise felt weary and confused, uncertain of her own role in this game they were playing, but no longer despairing.

Shock sliced through her, a jolting fission that reverberated in every bone of her body. Slowly, almost gently, he had placed his hands at her waist, fingertips tracing little shapes along the sharp angles of her hips. All at once, Louise realized – his hands. _His_ hands.

He hadn't let her undress him, hadn't given up his control in the slightest. This was his concession, the only thing he'd let her have, the only battle he'd allowed her to win. His hands, Jack's hands, stripped bare of the leather gloves he always wore, slipping into the pattern she still remembered after all this time. It was in this place that they'd studied every inch of one another, delighting in discovery, and of the two of them, Jack had always been best. He'd learned the sweet spots on her body like they were theorems that only required memorization, and every time he'd have her body singing, like clockwork.

She didn't speak, could barely breathe, but her mind was spinning. Heart thumping loudly, Louise closed her eyes and sucked in a deep breath. She told herself it was coincidence, that he wouldn't remember – he remembered so little of the details, already. Louise almost prayed that he wouldn't, because it would make it so much easier to hate him, to hate this, the way she was supposed to hate it.

But he wouldn't give that to her, either; his hands and lips ghosted over her skin perfectly, exactly in the way they had over a decade ago. There was a roughness to his palms, to the pads of his fingers, that was new, that let her know this was different; a twist to his wrist and the flick of his tongue that hadn't been there before, something dark and taunting that Jack had never possessed then. It didn't matter; he pulled her up against him, chest to back, and every moment she was slipping farther and farther away.

She could feel him against her hip, the velvety softness of his hidden skin, the length she remembered so well, and her body reacted instinctively to him, a carnal need pulsing through her body so suddenly she had to reach out an arm to steady herself against the crumbling wall. Everything that had been missing in those other men was _there_, suddenly upon her and demanding things from her that she didn't know if she could give. Louise had wanted this so desperately for so long; she hadn't thought that when she got it, she'd be terrified.

His arms shifted into a pattern she knew by heart, feeling one second like nothing had ever changed and the next as if some horrible pretender was stealing her boy's old moves. One arm around her ribs, hand cupping her breast; one hitched around her hip, fingers burying into her in a position it had taken Jack a full week to perfect, and that nobody had come close to getting right in eleven long years.

Louise felt her weight shift, felt herself fall into the old pattern almost out of habit – yielding to him, conforming to him, head lolling back to rest on his shoulder and eyelids fluttering. Abstractly, she heard herself panting for him, making sounds that begged for him without words, felt herself clutching at the pressed fabric covering his forearms and straining her body to get closer to him.

A low breath hissed out between his teeth as he pulled her body into place, as if she weighed nothing, as if the matter that made up her entire being meant absolutely nothing in comparison to his dominating presence. She felt his name hang on her lips and tried, out of habit, to bite it back, to keep from screaming out a name that didn't belong to the man she was with. And then, perhaps for the first time, Louise truly realized that Jack Napier was alive, and that he and the Joker were not separate entities at all – they were the same horrible person.

He drove himself into her, breath hitching in her ear, and Louise cried out, his name falling from her lips like the first drop of blood from a wound.

She didn't know if it was because of the exquisiteness of their joining, or because her heart was breaking.

* * *

Louise woke in the morning alone. Every inch of her hurt: her sore body, her aching soul, her troubled mind. Her greasepaint adorned fingertips groped at the cold, empty space beside her. His smell – that heady, dark scent that clung to him perpetually – assaulted her from every side. The air smelled like him, the carpet smelled like him – _she_ smelled like him. His sweat, the paint, the carefully pressed threads of his suit – the Joker was stifling in his absence.

Their coupling had been hasty, rough, devoid of intimacy of any sort. He had been the ghost of himself as he took her, and even with her eyes closed she couldn't forget who he was – didn't want to forget who he was. He'd been rougher than Jack had ever been, and yet Louise had reveled in it, had trembled for him, had begged for him with words that made feel disgusted with herself now. Everything about it had been degrading, from the dark bruises he'd adorned her skin with to the way her body had reacted to him, practically weeping for his touch. It had been violent and cruel and as empty as it was shamefully satisfying.

And at night, she'd dreamt of the blonde girl, except this time there were no words. There was only silence, absolute condemnation and disapproval on the mystery girl's part. They sat in the very room Louise was sleeping in, just as it was, and the blonde girl had looked away from her the entire time, not even deigning to speak a word.

What could be said, really, after the monstrous thing she'd done?

Nothing, of course there was nothing to be said; that was why he'd slipped from the apartment the minute they were finished, leaving Louise in an exhausted heap on the floor, half naked and covered in the remnants of his time with her – his smell, his sweat, his makeup.

Now, groping next to her, Louise wrapped her hand around his calling card, the only thing he ever seemed to leave in his wake that wasn't destructive. The patterned back was red this time, from a different deck, and across it he'd written her one line in bold black ink. His words jarred her, shot through her like stinging poison, and her entire body flamed with embarrassment and shame as she read his parting line:

**You're not the only thing I've got coming. **

As ominous as it was insulting. With her brow furrowed and frowning heavily, Louise flipped over the card and experienced yet another jolt of shock.

It wasn't the Joker's card at all.

It was the Queen of Hearts.


	32. Chapter 32

**A/N:** All right, guys! I'm trying to knock these chapters out more quickly than I have for the past year. _Grave_ will be COMPLETED in around eight chapters, if that. This has been such an amazing experience – this story is without a doubt the most serious, not to mention the longest, piece of writing I've ever done on any subject. I've grown so much as a writer and a person since I began writing about Jack, and you are all incredibly precious to me for simply being there to witness it.

After this chapter we're in the home stretch. I've known from the very beginning how I wanted this to end, and I'm excited for you to see it.

How about we try to go for **six hundred **reviews this chapter? I know we can do it!

Anyway, I'd also just like to mention that any religious views or practices mentioned in this story are not necessarily my own and are purely reflections of my character's faith. This also holds true to any personal views on certain sexualities, ethnicities, races, etc. I try my best to represent characters as they would exist in real life, and this includes, perhaps unfortunately, certain prejudices or controversial viewpoints that come from living in a certain place. Don't worry, nobody has reviewed and called me names or anything - I just wanted to make sure that all of my readers know that I respect and love human beings for the character they show and the special vulnerabilities they exhibit, not because they are a certain color or worship a certain God, etc.

Enjoy!

* * *

_"People are distracted by objects of desire, and afterwards repent of the lust they've indulged, because they have indulged with a phantom and are left even farther from Reality than before."_

_~Jalaluddin Rumi_

* * *

"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned."

Louise took a trembling breath and smoothed out the photograph she held – it was wrinkled beyond salvation, tiny white lines marring Peyton Riley's flawless, tanned skin.

Then again, Louise had to remind herself, Peyton Riley's flawless, tanned skin had long ago crumbled into nothingness, rotted away like old meat in the depths of Gotham's waterfront.

Closing her eyes on the image, Louise continued, the smell of aged pine and pressed bibles assaulting her as she spoke: "It's been eleven years since my last confession."

Tangled around the fingers of one hand there dangled a rosary dotted with black beads, a tiny, crucified Jesus swinging from the end. It had been thrust into her hands just five minutes after she'd entered, the wide eyes of a nun guiding her towards the confession booth without even having to ask why she was there. Every inch of her wept sin.

"That is a long time, my child." The voice that floated back to her from beyond the wooden partition was quaking with age; there was a gentleness in it that she had heard before – it was the timber of a soul completely at ease. "Our Heavenly Father is nothing if not forgiving, and He rejoices that you have returned to Him after these long years. Tell me, what are your sins?"

Louise breathed in, surprised at the catch in her throat. She hadn't expected to be overcome by emotion in this place, not after all this time, not after giving up religion completely so long ago. After the deaths of Jack and Lola, Louise had convinced herself that coming to places like this was a worthless gesture. For a little while, ideas about souls and heaven still chased after her, perhaps because years of a Catholic education couldn't be undone overnight. They hadn't remained forever, though; little by little, every belief that had been ingrained into the fiber of her being dissolved into nothingness inside of her. No, worse than nothingness – her carefully constructed religious and moral views disintegrated into something akin to bitterness, a deep and merciless throbbing of rage at everybody that had ever looked her in the eye and swore to her, _swore_, that God rewarded the faithful. Rewarded? _Rewarded_?

For years she had been good, steadfast, loyal. For years she had knelt at her bedside, crossed herself, and whispered her prayers before slumbering. Louise had sat in a confessionals just like this one more times than she could count, speaking aloud her misdeeds in soft tones and carefully worded repentance. Until the very end, until Lola's last breath, until Peyton Riley twisted those still-beautiful lips into an expression of pity, Louise had believed.

Nobody had ever rewarded Louise Speller for being a good person. So, with time, she'd stopped being one.

She'd never looked back, hadn't found it necessary or even desirable. The men she slept with, the cigarettes she smoked, the people she wronged – had any of it mattered, really? Could God, if there was indeed a God, pass judgement on her after what He'd _done_?

It was this reasoning, and perhaps her own hearty dose of guilt and shame at her actions, that had kept her away from places like this. The cathedral was old and crumbling at the edges, as Gotham seemed to be. It was one of the only operating establishments left in the Narrows except for Arkham Asylum. The state of the Narrows, the disturbed people still residing within its broken boundaries, created a need for a missionary-type church that worked daily for the physical and spiritual salvation of the poor souls left behind after Jonathan Crane's fear toxin.

The nuns had taken one look at her slinking into the church without shoes, bruises tracing her collarbone, and had whisked her off to confessional with clucking tongues.

Now, she could hear the steady, fluttering breath of the priest next to her, separated only by a thin slab of wood and one curtained, iron mesh window. Even if she had wanted to peek, Louise knew that the face of her confessor would be shadowed and unrecognizable.

"I've . . . I've done a horrible thing, Father."

The smell of greasepaint. The ridges of his scars as he pressed his face into her neck and bit down hard. Dark bruises dotting her skin along her collar bone, her throat, the swell of one breast.

The way she'd screamed for him.

From beyond the confession booth, a low hum of prayer began, soothing and familiar in its own steady, constant way. Midnight mass.

"The Lord forgives all wrongs; He is a just and patient God."

_You're not the only thing I've got coming. _

A tear fell onto the back of one thin hand and quivered before sliding down, dripping to the floor.

"It's not God I'm worried about, Father. I don't know if I can forgive myself; if . . . if other people could forgive me."

"Worry not about how your actions are viewed by your peers, but how they reflect your true character in the eyes of the Lord. Only God can pass judgement on those He has created. Remember, a soul that follows not its own whims and desires but works daily to follow the path set for it by our God is a soul above reproach."

The droning hum of prayer grew louder, a peaceful mantra that chilled Louise to the bone. The last time she had truly prayed she'd been at Lola's deathbed. She didn't count those desperate pleas to nobody that had issued from her mouth in the days after Jack's death was announced to her.

For a long while, Louise sat silent, reflecting on the priest's words – they were textbook to her, a standard response that was solid and applied well to almost any situation. She could find no fault in what he'd said to her, except . . . except, would his kind voice retain the compassion and understanding it held if she told him why she was here? If she spoke aloud the wrong she'd committed, not only under the eyes of God, but within the walls of Gotham City, the Joker's own playground? There were victims of his madness everywhere, stumbling like zombies through their lives without their loved ones. Could she blame any one of them if they despised her for what she was doing? Without a doubt, she would have despised any lover of Johnny Sabatino's.

Why, then, was she here? Why had she dragged her tainted body through the streets in her tattered clothes to get to this place?

"Perhaps your guilt and fear would weigh less heavily upon you if you spoke aloud your sins, and prayed forgiveness for them," the priest suggested softly, kindly.

Louise worried her bottom lip, biting down hard enough to draw blood. The trickle was coppery on her tongue, and in its aftermath Louise tasted the Joker, as if he had invaded every pore of her body, as if he were in her very veins.

"For the past four months, I've become . . . intimately involved . . . with a terrible man. A murderer."

_No, take it back, take it back, don't let him know!_ Her brain, her blood, her heart screamed it at her; every shuddering cell within her resisted this revelation, and yet still she was compelled to expose herself. Was it the years of careful Catholic training that dragged the truth from her? Or was it something else, something less believable, something like her restless soul?

A deep sigh filled the booth adjacent to her own, and Louise could almost see the old man in his starched collar, reaching up gnarled fingers to pinch the bridge of his nose.

"This man is lost in a far deeper way than even yourself," the priest said solemnly. "But if it is the shame you feel at consorting with such a man that brings you here, I can tell you only one thing: The Lord works in mysterious ways. Your own sin lies not in knowing this man, not in caring for him, but only in giving yourself to him before you are man and wife. Know that love, even when given to the sinner, is never itself a sin – if it was, my child, our Lord would be guilty of sinning Himself, for He loves each and every one of us, though we are eternally unworthy.

"My advice to you is this: Surround this man with the pure love of your spirit, of your soul. Give compassion and forgiveness to him endlessly; guide him in the direction of salvation. Refrain from the temptations of the flesh and the deadly sin of pride. Perhaps you are drawn to this man because God wishes you to help him find his way Home."

The words of the priest settled over her. Absently, Louise heard him assign her a large number of Hail Marys and forgive her of her sin.

The weight crushing her, heavy and molten as lead, did not abate or dissipate; the great relief of Heavenly forgiveness did not course through her veins like a healing balm as it had so often after confessions as a child. Disappointment settled over her numb extremities, tingled in her fingertips. It wasn't that God had lost His power to heal – it was only that she'd forsaken Him long ago, and now she could no longer find Him.

Staying in the confessional was no longer necessary – Louise knew it would do no good, no matter the number of sins she confessed. There was a poisoned vein that ran through her body and spirit, now, something dark and corrupted that pumped venom into every hopeful crevice of her soul. These worldly people, these pious, forgiving humans – how could their words touch her? How could they reach that frozen, selfish shadow writhing within her breast?

There was no escape from this for her, no salvation. She understood that, now.

"Thank you, Father," Louise murmured, crossing herself mechanically as she clutched the fading photograph and took the first step to leave. "I'll do as you instructed."

"Of course, child. Every man can be saved, remember that. After all," the priest chuckled warmly to himself, a great, belly-shaking laugh that temporarily warmed Louise's chilled body, "It's not as though you were speaking of a devil like the Joker!"

Another laugh, and this time Louise felt her breath freeze in her trachea, until her lungs were nothing more than brittle glass waiting to shatter and pierce her thrumming heart.

"So you see, my dear . . . Things are never as bad as they appear."

* * *

Louise had made a thousand decisions, millions of little choices, that brought her to this place.

Some had not been made by her. Her mother's drug abuse and spiraling depression had necessitated their move to the unfavorable district of Gotham City; pure chance had situated her a stone's throw away from Jack Napier's abode. Often it had felt unreal that there had been a time in her life, thirteen long years, that she did not know him. Another rundown city and Louise Speller would have never made his acquaintance; perhaps she might have fallen in love with a man of God, as her absentee father had hoped. One different desperate decision by the coke addicted woman who had birthed her and Louise would not even know Jack Napier existed.

She couldn't place all the blame – or credit, if you wanted to be idealistic – on others, though. Even their initial meeting had been a choice. What sort of girl, Louise wondered, would call out to a disturbed looking young man standing in the middle of a filthy street? What sort of girl would _insult_ this stranger, this possibly unbalanced youth, in a new home? Now, she couldn't remember exactly what it was that had made her do it. The impudent question had left her lips before she could bite it back – _Are you retarded? – _and when he'd answered, she'd felt some inexplicable pull to his person. In her teen years, blinded by love and religion and altruism, Louise had believed this was Fate – God, stepping in to show her the way. Time had taught her a few things. That decision, too, had been nothing more than coincidence, a spur of the moment thought that her agitated young mind had allowed to turn into an action.

Loving him hadn't been a choice. That, at least, was one thing truly beyond either of their controls. If he had ever loved her she knew it was against every better judgement in his calculating and methodical mind. She, on the other hand, had been doomed from the start.

The choice to leave immediately after his funeral, Lola's funeral, had been the worst choice she'd ever made, but it wasn't the one she was reflecting on now. One finger traced the edge of the playing card he'd left for her, that mystifying message scrawled on the back. Louise closed her eyes and breathed in deeply through her nose. From somewhere in the building there came the unbearable, gut-wrenching screams of a tortured man.

Cheap perfume, hanging on the fibers of his overcoat.

A news message, flashing the picture of a pretty young graduate student across the screen.

That whore at Hush's doomed celebration, twirling her hair around her finger and talking about the little Arkham Asylum intern nobody had seen since the Joker's incredible escape.

The playing card crumpled into her fist as she curled her fingers inward, muscles all throughout her body tightening, jaw clenching and teeth coming down hard on the inner flesh of her cheek. It was unthinkable, what she was considering doing. Another choice that could absolutely ruin her.

Alex Ramie's screams cut through the thin, crumbling walls like a serrated blade, sawing away distance with every crack of his pitiful voice. Despite her pleas, despite the information she'd afforded to him on Hush's identity, the Joker was still torturing his helpless captive. She tried to reason with herself, remind herself that Ramie was a murderer, that he'd killed her coworkers – there was no doubt in her mind that the families of the people he'd slaughtered would find the Joker's actions a kind of grim justice.

Louise didn't think it was justice. Her empty, churning stomach told her this better than any mental reasoning could. The Joker's act was sickening, and not just because he was taking metal instruments and sawing off the frailest parts of Alex Ramie's body.

No. What the Joker was doing was atrocious because . . . because, mere feet from where Louise sat on the floor, his baby sister had died. And Jack Napier, _Jack_, was torturing a man, slicing him into pieces little by little, in the same building. It was like slitting the throat of an innocent on the steps of a church, virgin blood staining holy flagstone. It was a contamination.

Leaving this apartment eleven years ago proved to be the worst mistake of her life. Leaving it this time . . . it was necessary.

She let the battered card roll easily from her hand and then stood, looking down at her bare feet. The midnight trip to the church she'd found the night before had been bad enough, but to make that toiling, terrifying hike again?

There was no other choice. Another agonized yell from Ramie shredded the last of her misgivings; if she was going to go, it had to be now, while the Joker was too occupied to pay her any notice. And she did have to go. If Louise stayed . . . if she stayed and listened to this, to a dying man, the last of her that was still good, that still believed, would die. And she couldn't handle that – it simply was not in her, just as it was not in her to find the Joker and demand he stop his tortures.

Louise couldn't see it, could not witness such a gruesome scene – not after everything she'd seen already. Not with Jack standing there, hands dripping blood. Not after he'd touched her with those hands.

With one last shudder, Louise slipped from the apartment she knew so well. She didn't look back.

* * *

Louise had Sister Frances – the matronly old soul who had agreed to drive her back to the mainland in the Church's old, beaten van – drop her off at the one place she didn't expect the Joker to look for her at right away.

It was how she ended up sitting in Sydney White's obnoxiously-sized dressing room, freshly showered and wrapped in something delicate and diaphanous that resembled the offspring of La Perla lingerie and an old-fashioned silk kimono.

Sydney stood across from her in her own getup – something nauseatingly pink, with frills, and matching wedge slippers. The shock of her red hair was the only imperfect thing about her, though she had apparently gotten straight out of her bed when Louise had rung the doorbell around half past three in the morning. In her gloved hands – she wore very expensive lotion at night to keep the skin of her hands looking youthful, and it just _couldn't_ be wiped all over the duvet, darling – she held the pitiful remnants of Louise's red dress, the only thing she'd been wearing for the past three days.

"Where the hell have you _been_?" Sydney asked, the question coming out with an impertinent bent. Her expression kept Louise from taking offense, however – it was sheet white, as if she'd witnessed the death of a loved one, and her eyes were wide and full of a sort of childlike terror.

Without thinking, Louise reached up and touched her throat – the bruises he'd left had faded by now, but somehow she could still feel them. Like they'd only temporarily receded, still festering just beneath of her skin, ready to remind her at any time of the appalling thing she'd done.

Exhaling wearily, Louise shrugged and replied, "I took off. I was outside when . . . when the shootings began. Getting coffee. And when I realized what was happening, I just . . . I just took off."

Sydney pressed her hand against her face and leaned against the edge of a cream-colored chaise lounge.

"But there was this witness, this batty old lady, that said she'd been hiding behind a street vendor's booth when the shootings started. She said . . . she said she saw the Joker get out of a van and grab a woman who looked just like you."

Ice dripped steadily down Louise's spine at these words. She swallowed carefully once or twice before answering, trying desperately to keep her voice level as she responded.

"I dunno what to say, Syd. I mean . . . it was an ordeal. I'm sure an old woman like that wouldn't know for _sure_ what she saw. Besides, obviously I'm fine. If . . . If I had been with the Joker, do you think I would be sitting here right now?"

Sydney shook her head, "Oh, honey . . . you don't look fine. You don't look fine at all." Her thin hands held up the torn, bedraggled red dress. "And what is this, then? Where have you stayed this past week? Why didn't you go back to your apartment, instead of coming here?"

_Because he'd find me way too fast if I went home. _

"Oh, I don't know. So much has happened to me since I came back here. I guess I sort of just . . . lost it. I ended up over at the edges of Gotham, hanging around some guy I met in a bar a couple nights before Sara died. That was all I had to wear. I just . . . couldn't stand going home."

"We thought you were dead, at _best_," Sydney admonished. "I was crying my eyes out for my poor old friend for _days_. Did you know Gordon seemed to take that old woman's report seriously? He searched your apartment high and low as soon as he got his hands on a warrant."

Quickly, Louise took inventory of all the possessions she'd left in her apartment. There hadn't been much – the money she owed had been verging on astronomical by the time her workplace had been ambushed, and she'd had to sell many of her large items to make rent. Undoubtedly, the sparseness of her living conditions would be pitiful, but not incriminating. But was there anything else there that could indicate she'd been involved with the Joker?

Finally, Louise gave a sigh of relief and relaxed. Nothing came to mind – not a card of his that she'd kept, nor a smear of greasepaint on her clothing; she'd carefully discarded the bloodstained jeans she'd been wearing when he'd given her the scar on her thigh. The most they would find were packed boxes, a pile of overdue bills, and an empty refrigerator.

"It's strange, though, isn't it?" Sydney commented, and Louise noticed uneasily that the Southern woman hadn't missed the frantic look in her eyes at the mention of Gordon searching her apartment. "That you should be in two places that the Joker hit. Such . . . a terrible coincidence."

Louise smiled wryly at Sydney, hoping her pale face would betray nothing of what she'd been through.

"What can I say? I've got the worst luck. Always have."

It wasn't exactly a lie and Sydney seemed to sense this, for immediately the tension left her lanky body. She smiled down at Louise beatifically, warping seamlessly from skeptical interrogator to genial hostess.

"Well, up you get! I've got a pantry full to the bursting and you look as thin as a rail. I won't let you rest your head until I see you eat something."

Louise followed Sydney out of the room without protest, wondering silently just how long she could stay hidden in this place –

And how long she could bear to stay away from him.

* * *

"It was a good first step," the blonde girl tells her. Louise detects a hint of pride in her voice. "The leaving, I mean."

They are walking side-by-side through a well-groomed forest on what looks like a dusty little garden path. Sunlight filters through the leaves in spotty patterns, and Louise thinks she can hear a galloping noise somewhere in the distance. The surroundings are serene, and she feels safe here.

"Of course you're safe here," the blonde tells her. Louise doesn't question how it is the dream girl knows her thoughts. All logic, all science, seems to suspend indefinitely in this plane of consciousness, this dream state. "And you will be, for at least a day or two. He's too busy to look for you right now."

"But he'll find me. He'll come for me eventually." Louise pauses at the edge of the trail, fingers outstretched to catch a tiny drop of dew dangling from a leaf. The coolness of the water feels so _real_ against her fingertip, the bead glinting distorted reflections at her. "Or else, I'll give in and go to him."

The blonde swoops down to pick a daisy, delicate white petals framing a deep golden center. She twirls it between her fingertips, and Louise watches the flower dance, spellbound.

"You're stronger than you think you are, Louise. Leaving him took guts. It took faith." Daintily, the girl starts plucking petals from the daisy one-by-one. They float too slowly to the ground, as if gravity has slowed. "The problem now is that you still can't seem to see who he really is. You're blind to him. But I've seen his mind. Jack isn't there, not anymore."

Petal after petal drift to the ground, dusting the dirt path with white. The galloping seems to be getting closer every minute. Squinting, Louise can see a figure approaching on horseback, the straight, poised form of a capable rider black against the springtime greens. A cool chill sweeps across her body; behind the rider, the trees are wilting, leaves shriveling brown and falling to coat the now-dead grass. He is ushering in winter.

"Sometimes, I think you're right. But other times . . ." Louise pauses; she can tell that the girl notices the rider approaching, and yet she does not acknowledge his encroaching presence. She simply continues to shed the daisy of its petals. "Other times, I think that he's still somewhere in there. There are moments when it's like . . . it's like he's _him_. Just . . . buried inside of himself."

The girl sighs next to her, a sad little sound. She has neared the last petals by now. Louise can hear the huffing of the rider's mount as it snorts, puffs of white air rising like steam in the cold. Hugging her arms around herself, Louise faces the girl, whose face is as indistinguishable as ever.

"Valentine's Day is almost here." The girl nods her head towards the rider, freezing everything around him. "You know how the legend goes, don't you?"

Louise is distracted by the hideous shape of the rider as he approaches – there is something wrong with his face, she realizes. Something uneven and dark, as if his entire head and neck are wrapped in . . . bandages.

"No," Louise murmurs. Her breath is like smoke in front of her, now. Everything is freezing, except, as usual, the blonde girl beside Louise, who remains completely unaffected.

"St. Valentine can cure the blind." The blonde plucks the last petal from the daisy, pinching the soft whiteness between her fingers and holding it up in front of Louise.

"He loves you not," the girl whispers, and it's then that Louise notices the tear streaking down the blonde's neck.

* * *

The luxuriousness of Sydney's home was exceedingly strange to Louise after living years of her life just struggling to make end's meet. The last few days in the Joker's company, holed up in her old apartment with nothing to eat, no change of clothes, and no heat, were especially difficult. Yet, Louise found the unnecessary lavishness of Sydney's manor to be less of a comfort than she would imagine. The mattress in the guest room had been too soft, the pillows too plump and feathery – Louise could not get to sleep, no matter the state of her exhaustion, until she had moved herself to the floor with her blankets. After sleeping like the dead for ten hours, Louise woke from her unsettling dreams to an even more unsettling reality. For hours she had sat at the side of the Jacuzzi tub in the guest bathroom, just staring at the plethora of delicate bath salts and soaps that were arrayed on an elegant little shelf in front of her. Hundreds of different scents. And for what? A bubble bath?

Finding food to eat had been an awkward affair – the minute she'd stepped into the kitchen to dig around the pantry as she had the night before she was accosted by a radiant Latin American girl who spoke to her in broken English.

"You have breakfast wishes, Miss?"

Louise had realized that this was Sydney's personal cook, a nineteen year old beauty from Guatemala who had arrived just after Louise had turned in the night before, around four in the morning.

Apparently, Mr. Carroway liked his breakfast sprawling and complicated, with everything cooked to perfection and steaming as he sat down with his newspaper to break his fast before work.

Immediately, Louise had denied any hot food, begging instead to take a box of crackers and some sliced cheese and make a feast for herself. It had tasted delicious.

Sydney was whisking around the house, worrying frantically over some charity event of the season that she had to attend the next night, and Louise had hardly spoken to her. Instead, Louise had spent most of her time curled in a thin blanket out on Sydney's back porch, watching the ponies graze the sparse February grass between patches of greying snow. She'd been sitting there for hours before Sydney joined her.

"You must be freezing!" Sydney exclaimed, huddling her long limbs into a great overcoat.

Louise merely shook her head – for the past hour she'd been preoccupied with thoughts of the Joker's tongue tracing the gentle curve of her ear, and that had kept her more than warm enough.

"I was thinking, darling, that it would be good for you to get out. Why don't you come with us to the opera tomorrow night? I have a dress of my cousin's that would fit your figure _perfectly_, I swear it."

Louise sighed; she could see her breath in the chill air. "Oh, Syd, that's a wonderful offer, but I just don't know if I'm up to it . . ."

"Oh, but of course you are! It's the perfect night out for you – Nick and I have our own booth, so you won't even have to mingle much. Come, who doesn't love such a moving rendition of _Romeo & Juliet_?" Sydney reached out to clasp Louise's cold hand between her two gloved ones, grey eyes staring imploringly into blue. "And all proceeds go to charity. Your attendance would be a good deed."

Louise scrunched her face up into an expression of tortured reflection, as if there was actually a passing thought in her mind that was considering sitting through an opera after what she'd experienced, after the Joker had been _inside_ of her just a few days ago. Sydney had no idea about any of this, of course; she had no idea that Louise's reluctance to mingle into high society didn't only concern the unfortunate deaths of coworkers. Sydney's suggestion was, Louise told herself, simply a kind gesture. The woman was trying her best to make things easier on Louise, in the only way she knew how.

She squeezed the redhead's hands gently, meeting the woman's direct stare with one of her own – one that clearly displayed her grief, the tormented state of her mind, and the impossibility of her venturing outside of this secluded manor home into a society event. Louise didn't have to say anything else; Sydney smiled sadly at her, reaching out to push a tangle of black hair from her friend's furrowed brow.

"You know, I always pictured us sitting here like this." Sydney sat back in her expensive wicker lawn chair and gestured toward her pastures. "It was always my dream to have this life. A kind, rich husband; a beautiful home; acres and acres of land for my ponies . . . And you were always there. I always included you in my little dreams. You know you were the only girl at St. Katherine's who understood me, who didn't turn up their nose at my accent or my crooked front teeth? Whenever I thought about the future, and showing up those bratty princesses, I always saw you next to me. Just as accomplished, just as happy. I pictured us really sticking it to 'em, after everything they said about us."

Sydney glanced at Louise, and the latter knew what the former was thinking: _What happened to you?_ _Why did you fall apart like this?_

"That was a beautiful dream, Sydney," Louise said honestly. The truth was, she couldn't feel jaded or bitter that the woman had gotten everything she'd wanted – she had been a good friend and a good person, and she deserved this life. "I'm so glad things worked out the way they did for you."

"But what about _you_?" Sydney asked, her eyes worried and round once again. "Honey, it's not that I'm turning up my nose at how much you have in your bank account, or the number of shoes you're able to own. Lord knows I grew up just like you did, before Daddy had his lucky break. But . . . you aren't happy. I look in your eyes and it's like I'm looking at a dying woman, someone who's already signed a binding agreement with their God."

Louise thought about her dreams, and the delicacy of the blonde's build, and the way things felt so . . . peaceful, when they were together. So right. As if that, _there_, was where Louise was truly meant to be. Right at the blonde girl's side.

"Maybe I have," Louise murmured softly. She smiled after she said it, mostly to calm the alarmed expression on Sydney's face. "The truth is, Syd . . . I never wanted any of this. The big house in the Palisades, the beautiful grounds. It's incredible, don't get me wrong, and I'm _glad_ it's you who has it. But . . . whenever I pictured my future happiness, it had more to do with the people who were still with me."

She thought of Jack, and the early morning they'd spent talking about their dreams of a future together; the way he'd kissed her glossy eyelids, soft as the brushing of a moth's wings against her skin, as she'd painted a picture of her ideal home to him in hushed whispers:

They'd get a place somewhere outside of Gotham, maybe at the edge of a bordering state so that they were still near the city that had bred them. It would be in need of a little tender loving care, and the yard would be grown over, but it would have character – it wouldn't look just like the other houses on that block. There would be room for kids to play out back, maybe space enough for a little garden where she could grow sweet peas. They would buy it together. He would use those exquisite, capable hands and his wonderful, reasoning mind to fix up all the structural and plumbing problems; Louise would tend to the yard out back before plastering and painting each room carefully, up to and including the room she would cover in little daisies, where they would eventually place a rocking chair and crib.

Lola would be with them until she moved out, because of course in this world she was well again. She would visit frequently from college, and she and Louise would have to wait until Jack left the room to start gossiping about whatever new man Lola was seeing at school.

It had been her dream, the only one she'd ever kept in her heart, and she remembered how nervous she'd been to share it with Jack for the first time that morning. She remembered that he'd sighed against her skin and said, "It's perfect." In that moment, she had felt like it would really happen.

"I think I'll take a walk," Louise said. With one frozen hand she wiped a tear from her cheek.

Sydney pointed out across her lawn to the forest bordering her stables. "I've got a little riding path just back there, honey. Don't be scared if you run into some of the neighbors while you're out there. They use my clearing to shoot skeet this time of the year."

Louise barely heard her; she was already making her way across the frosted yard.

A part of her wasn't even surprised when she stepped onto the riding path and realized that it was the same trail she'd walked along in her dreams. The season was wrong, of course – February was still winter, and the trees were bare of vegetation. There certainly weren't any daisies lining the path that she could pluck, nor any leaves dripping dew that she could reach for. Still, it was recognizable – she had been here last night, though until that moment she'd never stepped foot on this ground.

It wasn't her, Louise reflected dimly. Whatever this was, whatever was happening that allowed her to glance briefly into her own future, she knew it wasn't her own doing – this wasn't a comic book; people didn't have psychic abilities or superpowers, particularly not Louise Speller. Whatever it was that created these deja-vu moments originated with the blonde girl. Louise didn't know what the girl was, or who she was, but it was becoming more and more clear that she wasn't just a figment of her imagination. Even the feel of her dreams was different when the blonde was around – there was a lucidness about the entire experience that was disturbing. Things did not react and proceed as they should in a natural dream sequence when the blonde was involved – they were warped, strange, unnatural. That gravity-defying daisy, the calm that inexplicably followed the blonde wherever she went, her references to Jack – they were undoubtedly things of the imagination, but at the same time they _weren't_. Louise didn't know this to be true, but she felt that it was, and that feeling was more real than many of the experiences Louise was having in her actual life.

She continued down the path for some time, wrapped in her own melancholy thoughts. As she walked, Louise questioned her sanity for even seriously considering the possibility that the blonde girl who sometimes visited her at night was not merely an invention of her mind, but a separate entity entirely. When she wasn't wondering over her mental neuroses, her mind invariably returned to the night she'd let the Joker take her – the smear of white greasepaint she'd tasted on her lips; that low, choking sound of abandon he'd made as he came.

It hadn't been what she'd wanted. After years and years of picturing miraculous reunions with Jack, that brutal, animal act had been like a terrible farce of her fantasies. Sleeping with him had hurt her deeply; she felt a shame in the act that far surpassed any other she had ever experienced. Out of all of the men she'd slept with, those strangers she'd tortured herself with over the years, it was with Jack that she felt the deepest regret for her actions. How absurd; how momentously _wrong_.

In the interest of being fair to herself, Louise had to wonder . . . Was there anything else she could have done, after years of longing for him? To find Jack alive . . . God, _alive_. It was all she'd wanted. It was all she'd prayed for for eleven goddamn years. Could she have done anything different, knowing herself, knowing the way she'd loved him? He was absolutely insane, a destructive force of nature that cared for nothing, for nobody, but he was _hers_ – she still thought of him that way, even after everything she'd seen him do, heard of him doing. It was sick, twisted – Louise knew this. She reminded herself every passing moment that what she'd done, what she'd let the Joker do to her, was truly vile. The reason she had to remind herself every minute, however, was because no matter how terrible she told herself it was, she couldn't stop thinking about it.

Somewhere near by a gunshot went off, the echo cracking through the still woods with the power of a lightning bolt. The unexpected explosion of sound effectively ripped Louise from her introspections, nearly eliciting a scream from her. For a wild moment she thought the Joker had found her, stomped through the Palisades in his purple suit and aimed his gun right between her eyes. She stood rooted to the spot, shaking head-to-toe, uncertain if she should run or simply give up altogether.

A soft nicker sounded to her far right, followed by the nervous shuffling of hooves against the hard dirt riding path. Louise pulled the thin blanket tighter around her shoulders and crept around a bend in the path, peering around a brown, naked bush to see the source of the noise. Next to the path a horse stood tethered to a tree, shifting nervously from foot to foot, apparently as spooked by the sound of the gunshot as Louise was. It was a magnificent horse, by the looks of it a young mare, with a shining mahogany coat and flowing black mane. Down its expressive nose there was a strip of white; on either side of this line the horse's glistening black eyes looked around nervously.

Louise felt a rush of empathy for the horse – after all, they were just two females scared to distraction by the sound of a gunshot. The horse was most likely the charge of whomever had shot the gun off, probably a middle-aged billionaire who got his kicks by shooting doves right out of the sky. It didn't look like the horse was accustomed to the sound, or to the surroundings – Louise guessed that the animal was as new to this neck of the woods as she was.

Feeling foolish at her own overreaction, Louise walked around the corner and approached the horse slowly, hand outstretched, until she was close enough to pat the trembling beast on the neck. The mare shied away from Louise at first, still spooked, but after a moment's pause she uttered a plaintive whinny and buried her wet nose into Louise's palm, nostrils snuffling at her fingers for sugar cubes. Louise smiled and stroked the horse's dark mane, making low shushing sounds to calm the mount's nerves. She'd had a somewhat clandestine involvement with a farrier in France, a young boy, just barely eighteen, who'd had at least five of Jack's physical attributes; it had been one of her longest runs with a single man since she'd left Gotham, and oftentimes she would hang around the stables where the boy worked and acquaint herself with the horses. In a way, she missed it.

From behind her there was a rustling of brush as the horse's rider trampled back to the path. Louise didn't bother turning around immediately – after all, it was too late to sneak away unnoticed and they'd make their awkward introductions soon enough. Right then, the horse's shining, expressive ebony eyes had her enthralled.

"Hello there," the man behind her said in greeting. Louise stroked her hand down the horse's quivering neck once more before turning her head to look at him.

For the briefest of instants, Louise truly believed she was going to faint. In front of her, a well-dressed, handsome man held out one hand to her, the other gripping the butt of a hunting rifle laying casually over his shoulder. The smile that graced his features looked natural and easy, all shiny teeth and perfect dimples, something he was sure to have perfected over decades of living in the upper echelon of society.

It was the same smile she'd seen staring up at her from a wrinkled photograph, Peyton Riley's luminous figure sprawled out next to him.

"You must be a friend of Syd's. I'm her neighbor, Thomas. Thomas Elliot."


	33. Chapter 33

**A/N:** Hey, guys. Man, this has taken a while. I actually didn't believe I would get this out before I went back to school. I had the WORST case of writer's block, but, luckily, a sort of inspiration struck me last night. This is what came of it, so hopefully you all enjoy it! The next chapters (some of which I've already written - can't WAIT for you to read them) shouldn't take as long as this one did. Much love to any of you who have stayed on this long, left lovely reviews that feed my obsession(s), and continue to support me after thirty-three chapters! You readers . . . are just stupendous. ~ B

* * *

Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams.

_~ Georg C. Lichtenberg_

* * *

Louise stood staring in openmouthed dismay at the man in front of her, his well-manicured hand still outstretched in greeting. The careful lines of his plastered-on smile displayed his own discomfort at her reaction to him. Louise was acquainted well enough with the ways of the affluent to know that his amiable façade was forced.

It seemed impossible that this could be happening, that the choice she'd made to finally break free of the Joker had led her directly back into his twisted web of deceit and violence. Hush, the man who had orchestrated a mass shooting at her former place of employment just _days_ before, the man whose men she'd watched choking to death, was offering her his hand in greeting.

Numbly, Louise knotted her fingers into the horse's mane, grasping onto the warm beast as if it were the last thing on earth keeping her from spiraling into nothingness. It was necessary, absolutely crucial, that she reach out and press their palms together. If she waited any longer, standing there staring at him in openmouthed panic, the man would surely realize something was amiss.

Stomach lurching, Louise reached out. The skin of his right hand was warm and slightly moist; the trigger finger was calloused –in the exact same way Jack's was, Louise thought queasily. Jerking back, Louise pressed her palm out flat against her slacks, wiping away the touch.

Elliot's cold smile lost some of its rigidness after this motion; the handshake itself lasted only a few seconds, Hush's assured grip dominating over Louise's faltering touch. When it was over, she felt physically relieved.

"I see you've met Clover." Elliot gestured fondly to his magnificent horse. "She's new and a bit gun shy, I'm afraid. I have to keep her a bit away from the clearing."

"I . . . noticed." Louise cleared her throat and looked around her, alarmed to find that none of the small, winding dirt paths curving off into different directions looked familiar to her. Had she really drifted so far along into the woods? No wonder she'd stumbled upon Elliot, no doubt on the edges of his own sprawling property. "She's a beautiful horse."

"Thank you." Elliot squinted dark eyes in her direction. "You look so familiar. Do I know you from somewhere?"

"No," Louise replied quickly, deciding immediately upon a promising looking path that led in the opposite direction of where she'd found the horse Clover. It hardly mattered where she went, at this point, as long as she fled from this nightmarish scene. "No, we've never met. I'm so sorry, I should really –"

"Get back to the house? Well, you won't want to be going that way. Keep on that path and you'll end up at Wayne Manor in about an hour."

Louise swallowed heavily, her shoulders frail and shaking beneath of her thin blanket. She felt like a horse herself at that moment, shivering and wet beneath an insufficient scrap of wool fabric.

"Here, let me show you. I was planning on going to talk to Nick anyway. This damn opera is more work than I thought it would be – for the life of me, I can't understand why Bruce reinstated the tradition."

Elliot strode over to the thin white oak he had Clover tethered to and untied her. With a soft clucking of his tongue, he guided the shy horse towards a path northwest of their current location. Louise wasn't certain, being a complete stranger to these woods, but it _looked_ as though Elliot was indeed intending on stopping by the Carroways' house. Loath as she was to put herself in such a perilous situation, she had to admit that declining and walking blindly in the opposite direction could only raise Hush's suspicions. It was clear he already recognized her somehow, though the extent of his knowledge could be very limited indeed. Louise didn't want to push it – better to continue on to Sydney's house, every moment approaching relative safety, than wander alone in an unfamiliar wood in the icy February dusk.

They walked along in silence for some time, Louise keeping her eyes and face averted to limit familiarity. Her efforts, though certainly valiant on her part, didn't seem to be entirely effective.

"I'm sure I've seen you before. I just can't put a finger on it. . . . Were you on a magazine cover, by any chance? Perhaps Vogue, around ten years ago? I've studied every copy quite thoroughly."

"How . . . interesting."

"It's not as odd as it seems. I'm a plastic surgeon. It's my job to study faces."

Louise said nothing. A great, leaden ball of impotent terror and frustration was pressing against her liver. Thomas Elliot and his smooth, polite façade leaning over an operating table, scalpel glinting as he carved away all the God-given imperfections insecure society folks despised. Thomas Elliot, with the safety of a steady job and monumental reputation, rubbing elbows with the world's elite, running around in bandages chasing after Bruce Wayne. A petty, boyish rivalry, no doubt, turned ugly with time and conceit.

And then there was Jack. Amidst all this chaos, these phony imposters treading on sacred ground, the Joker towered. There was nothing in his attitude that suggested he need even _fight_ for Gotham – his actions had been defensive, counter-strikes against an insignificant foe who had overstepped his bounds. On the surface, they were so similar – both outlandishly costumed and made up, both terrorizing citizens, both murdering innocents. Was it just her own lingering devotion to and respect for Jack that bred such contempt for Hush? Or was it truly something fundamental in their persons, in their attitudes, that made the Joker seem almost . . . impossibly . . . . more _honorable_?

What was Hush's excuse for being the way he was? Jack's sickness was created after years of mental torment and emotional agony; after every good and beautiful thing he'd ever known had been cleaved from him forever. He had been held down by mobsters and maimed in the streets of the city he'd lived in all his life. The purest human being he'd had the fortune to know, to share blood with, had been lowered into the ground before _sixteen_. Any affection he'd had for Louise had been stamped out instantaneously by tragic miscommunication.

Thomas Elliot, influential, beautiful and talented, could have been anything, could still be anything. The money he'd inherited from his wealthy parents elevated him to a status others could only _dream_ of. This man lived in the type of luxury she and Lola had whispered about rapturously late at night. Canapés and red wine and chocolate fountains. And still he was morally bankrupt, corrupt and unbelievably cruel.

It wasn't fair. It wasn't _fair_. People like Lola Napier had _existed_ on this Earth once, had breathed this very air with nothing but pure intentions and childish dreams. Still she had died, wasted and skeletal and in so much pain. All the goodness in the world couldn't save her.

Louise had watched Jack Napier lose his soul bit by bit every day for _years_ of his adolescent life. He suffered so silently, so internally, that if they had not been so close she might have put him off as another angry, violent, conceited youth. But she knew. The broken sigh in the middle of the night, the white knuckles clenched around a crumpled hospital bill, the dampness of his eyelashes after they made love. Jack's degradation hadn't happened overnight, she was witness to that. And just like in every other aspect of his life, he'd put up a damn good fight – until the very end, he'd loved other people. Few people had deserved such an honor, to be certain, but to the few who had Jack had given his own intense devotion. He'd loved Lola, may even have loved Louise.

Had Hush ever struggled with his own morality, his own darkness? The smugness of his face as he announced his professional vocation, the swaggering gait, his impeccably manicured fingernails. God, he reeked of money and privilege, of unwarranted arrogance. This man may have had his 'One Bad Day', but how bad did it have to have been to make him break? As bad as Jack's day? As bad as hers? Somehow, she couldn't imagine it.

"You can stop trying to hide your face from me, by the way. I've finally figured it out. You think I haven't watched the video of you stumbling through the bodies of my best men a hundred times?"

Louise grappled for something – anything – that might serve as an excuse; feigned surprise, indignation, and confusion were considered and discarded immediately, for she had waited too long to pretend that she didn't know what Elliot was talking about. The stricken look on her face gave her away as easily as if she'd confessed to the man. Of course, it was not surprising that Hush would have video cameras installed in his properties – Unsurprising, but dismaying nonetheless. The Joker obviously hadn't cared about security – he had _wanted_ Hush to see the carnage he'd left in his wake, _wanted_ his adversary to understand what a threat he was. Nothing the Joker did was a mistake. He just hadn't planned for Louise to run off, leave him, and find her way directly to the man who now knew of her existence.

"It was a mistake, what he did. Letting me see you. Maybe he figured that I wouldn't catch on, that I wouldn't put the pieces together. But see, our man is slipping up. He thought I'd figure you as a lucky whore, miraculously immune to his toxins. Except I already knew your face, even before that tape. From the news reports documenting the Joker's coming home party, and again, the day I hit your place of employment, remember?"

Remember? _Remember? _His fingernails drummed a jaunty march tempo against the barrel of his shotgun; his voice was all ice as he continued.

"I was suspicious even then, but it wasn't until I saw you in those videos that I realized you had a connection with him. But I'm uncertain even now what type of connection it is, you see, because . . . Well, because, I always figured our clown as a _no _woman kind of guy, and to tell you the truth, the fact that he has _two_ wrapped around his little finger is somewhat throwing me."

There, the truth Louise had so long been avoiding, the suggestion that cut her to the quick. Her toe caught on a root and she stumbled, jerked away the moment Hush's hand reached out to steady her flailing, trembling body.

"Whoa, whoa." Elliot laughed coldly. "Struck a nerve, did I? I thought I might."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Louise snarled, disoriented and cold. Her surroundings looked unfamiliar; Hush clearly wasn't taking them back to Sydney's home. In a way, she had never expected him to.

"You have a terrible poker face, do you know? Every little emotion is just right there on the surface. What I don't understand is how you managed to get wrapped up with him. You aren't like her. Harleen. No, not like her at all, that's pretty clear. So what is it about him, I wonder? It certainly isn't the looks, or the wealth – I gather he burns or otherwise discards all he doesn't spend on new suits and weaponry. The power might prove to be an aphrodisiac to some, but . . . that's not it, is it? No, I can see it's not . . . You're too _noble _of a person for that sort of thing, aren't you?" Elliot bit his lip thoughtfully, glancing edgewise at her with a searing look of appraisal. "Maybe I'm asking the wrong question. Maybe it's not what you see in him, but what _he_ sees in _you_. With Harleen it's quite obvious, of course."

"You'll have to excuse me, _Doctor_, but I don't know a damn thing about this Harleen woman, so it's not obvious to me."

"Ouch! I can excuse the attitude, Louise, considering you've just found out your _lover_ isn't as faithful as you'd believed, but keep in mind that I could kill you in a dozen different ways right now without exerting very much strength at all. And, unlike the Joker, I have absolutely _no_ reason _not_ to. Except, of course, that I'm curious."

"About my allure to the Joker," Louise bit out through clenched teeth.

"Yes. I'm not saying you aren't _worthy_ of admiration, sugar, don't get me wrong – I've created enough beautiful people to understand that you must have been a knockout in your day. But you're, what, pushing thirty? And the last few months rubbing – ah – _elbows_, with a mass murderer has taken its toll. Harleen Quinzel is in her mid-twenties. She's fresh, young, _bouncy_. Right out of grad school, with these big blue eyes, blonde hair. A _gymnast_. Not to mention that she's so incredibly entranced by your man that she'd do _anything _for him. In fact, it's her you have to thank for his freedom – Ever wonder how he _really_ busted out of Arkham Asylum?"

Louise looked away, swallowed hard. She thought of the blonde whore from whom she'd first heard this story, the story she'd brushed away as if it were clearly a lie, nothing more than nasty rumors propagated by the uncouth masses just slathering after a new media scandal. As time went on it became harder to ignore, and she could not say that she hadn't been warned – the Joker himself had hinted at it. That card he'd left her . . . God, but she had managed to ignore it so well, had _needed_ to believe it wasn't true! Jack, her Jack, with another woman. The most selfish, unreasonable part of her soul clawed outwards at the very thought of it, scratched long, stinging wounds on her insides. For just one passing moment, Louise allowed herself to ache because of it, to feel the acutest level of jealousy she had ever experienced. It didn't matter that he was a monster, that he could give this Harleen Quinzel nothing but a comical farce of a relationship that was as doubtlessly demeaning and violent as he himself was. None of that mattered for that one moment – it only mattered that _she_ was Jack Napier's _mistress_, and it _hurt_.

Then it was over. Louise took in a deep breath of crisp, cold air and faced Elliot. The surgeon had a small smile of satisfaction on his lips, as if delivering such news to her had truly been a pleasure. She did not doubt that it had been.

"So that's the question, isn't it? Poor Harleen has her uses, but you – you're not inclined to violence, you don't have any connections, you aren't particularly _good _at anything except for French, as far as I can tell." His head cocked sideways, eyes narrowed. After a moment's appraisal, Elliot nodded resolutely to himself. "But you see, I'm willing to bet my life that if it came down to it, our man the Joker? Well, he'd ruin everything just to save _you_. Not Harleen, no – _you. _Unspectacular, useless _you_."

"What does it matter?" Louise asked, voice shaking, trembling fingers curled up into her palms. "Why do you _care_ what he thinks about me? You said it yourself, I'm not _worth_ anything, I can't cause anybody any trouble! What could you possibly want with me?"

"The thing is, Louise, I've upset your special friend. An informant of mine told me a few days ago that the Joker is planning on taking me out at the opera my . . . friend . . . Bruce wrangled me into sponsoring with him. Honestly, I don't really care for the thought of dying. So, I'm sorry I have to do this and all, but you're far too valuable an asset to me to pass up such an opportunity. You understand, don't you, darling?"

Their eyes met, both sets obstinate and flickering with undisguised contempt for the other. Louise couldn't be certain, but she thought there might have been the slightest of wry smiles on her lips as the butt of Elliot's gun whipped through her air, directly at the side of her head.

* * *

There wasn't any pain. It was perhaps the single oddest part of waking up, for Louise remembered clearly her altercation in the forest outside of Elliot's sprawling manor home. Stranger even than waking in a beautiful, floor-length opera gown and gloves, neck bedazzled with a diamond choker and hair swept up in a delicate chignon at the base of her skull. A large ornamental hibiscus flower was placed directly over the point of impact on the left side of her skull. Her skin was not even tender as she probed it. Hush had given her pain pills to keep her sedated, then.

Her surroundings were too dark to see directly, but there was a musty, unused smell hanging thickly on the air – a strange mixture of mothballs, dust, and costume makeup.

For a moment, her irrational heart soared at the mere smell. The feeling was fleeting. There was no way the Joker was here, no way he would even come to her rescue. Louise knew the truth – Hush was wrong about the Joker. Whatever leverage he thought he'd gained by kidnapping her was an illusion – the Joker would never abandon his plans for her, the woman he'd used up and tossed aside like a broken ragdoll, the woman who had left him, directly challenging his authority and power. Hush had been dead wrong – the Joker would never save her. Louise could only hope that when this realization hit Elliot, it would be too late for the murderer.

Louise felt around until she found something to grab onto to pull herself upright. Her balance was off and she swayed, nearly crashing into a pile of what appeared to be boxes, though her fuzzy vision wasn't entirely reliable. Where was she? Her surroundings had an eerie, basement-like quality to them, but something told her Elliot had more style than to lug her limp body back to his manor and roll her into the wine cellar. With slowly dilating eyes, Louise examined more of her surroundings. The space was small enough to be claustrophobic; her head was a mere half inch from touching the thick wooden slabs of the ceiling when she stood. It was also cluttered, literally full from floor to ceiling with random items she couldn't quite understand – feather boas and bedazzled unitards, cravats and canes that looked to be from the 1800s. She followed the smell of costume makeup and found an entire box of half-used cosmetics.

The sound of quiet murmurs hummed somewhere in the distance, as if she were being observed by an arena of people, all waiting to see her next move and judge her for her actions. Louise took a few shaky steps towards what seemed to be the center of her cell and glanced over each shoulder. The quiet drone of hundreds of people continued, a shrill giggle of delight piercing through the hush from time-to-time. Just when Louise was about to scream for assistance from these shadows, these specters, quiet fell, and then: Clapping.

All at once Louise knew where she was. The opera. Somehow, Hush had managed to dress her up like his own personal wooden puppet. She could feel the strings jerking at her limbs as she considered calling out to the audience, begging for help – except it couldn't be as easy as all of that, he wouldn't have allowed for such a dangerous situation.

Louise could almost see the puppet master smiling his satisfaction at her helplessness, surrounded by humans who might help her and still mute. Hush was doubtlessly perched in his opera finery next to Bruce Wayne and whatever brainless twit of a supermodel he'd dragged along with him to an event this time, which left Louise –

Under the stage. Lights filtered in through the meager cracks in the floorboards; her ceiling creaked ominously as figures took the stage, mere shadows and weight that bent the floorboards of her prison. With this new light source, she could finally make out her surroundings, and was immediately grateful she had not tried to cry out. Tucked away in the corner of the tiny room sat a motionless man wrapped in bandages, eyes and gun trained on her.

The lines of Shakespeare's greatest love story soared in the opera house, each line so clearly articulated and projected that Louise could feel the reverberations of their words in her breastbone. She had woken up just in time for the balcony scene. Hush was out there in the audience somewhere, had left her with some unstable lackey of his that had either just joined his ranks or had somehow escaped being in that building the night the Joker gassed all of Hush's men. Elliot had locked her in the opera house, beneath the very stage, because . . . because even after his informant, he still had no idea what the Joker was going to do. Explosives would kill all of Gotham's elite, but she would go with the building, as Jack would later find out. If the Joker made a public appearance and she in any way tried to indicate to him where she was, the man locked inside of his dank storage room beneath the stage would shoot her immediately, just as he would if there was the slightest indication of the Joker's Laughing Gas filling the opera house. There was no way out of this. The most Louise could do was stay silent and still, hoping for the Joker to upset even the most carefully laid out plans once again.

A disturbance on stage above her drew Louise's attention upwards, towards the ceiling. The balcony scene had progressed; Romeo, standing unseen in the Capulet's garden, was waiting for Juliet to emerge – only Juliet never did.

The actor paused, the only indication of his nervousness the slightest shift of his right foot as he stood on the floor above Louise.

"He jests at scars that never felt a wound." Romeo shifted his foot again; Juliet had failed yet another cue to enter on the balcony and wrest an impassioned soliloquy from the unseen young man.

There was a rustling of discontent in the audience. Finally, Louise heard the pounding of light footsteps as Juliet hurried up the makeshift balcony and burst onto the set. The actress was slightly out of breath as she gasped out her lines – and immediately, Louise knew that she would never be saved. The voice that responded was not silky or trained in the art of elocution; it was a high-pitched, discordant voice, lilting and girlish.

"Romeo, _Romeo_, where – Wait, that's not right."

A pause flushed the audience with silence as they tried to make sense of whatever they were looking at, the sight which Louise may never see but which she nevertheless experienced acutely down below. She recognized the voice the minute it rang out, clear and shrill, though she had never heard it.

"Oh, well, I never liked this play anyhow. Ya know what it needs, don'tcha? A few laughs!"

A single gunshot reverberated through the opera hall, followed by horrified screams and a mad stampede as all the audience members tried to get up and flee. Louise clamped her hands over her mouth as the actor playing Romeo dropped to the stage floor. After only twenty seconds, droplets of his blood began to seep between the floorboards, dripping from the ceiling like rain.

It wasn't Juliet at all. It was Harleen Quinzel.


	34. Chapter 34

**A/N**: GUYS. I'm so freakin' sorry that this took so long. It's not an excuse, but having a full-time job, full-time education, and full-time boyfriend is seriously exhausting. So, I'm not totally thrilled with this chapter. I'm sure you guys will poke tons of holes through it, but at least I got it out. The rest of _Grave_ is officially WRITTEN. I will be posting the last chapters steadily until mid-July, when the movie comes out.

On another note, **I have a poll up on my profile** that I'd like you all to take a look at. I've only recently become addicted to the anime series _Death Note_. Yeah, I know, I'm super late in being obsessed with these things; I didn't watch TDK until like 2 years after it came out. Nevertheless, I'm thinking about writing a new story after this featuring L (of course) and either an OC, or entwining that storyline with _Veronica Mars_, a show about a wry female detective. Crazy, I know, but I can't help but feel the two could really be fantastic together. So far, I haven't gotten good feedback on the idea, but let me know what you all think. You WOULD NOT have to know about VM before reading; prior knowledge about DN is more required, as it will be set within that universe. And may I say – you should watch DN if you haven't already. It's seriously THE MOST epic thing I have ever watched, and that includes TDK.

Anyway, I'll stop my blabbing. Try to enjoy this one. The next will be . . . well. Much better. You'll see.

* * *

_"It happens fast for some people and slow for some, accidents or gravity, but we all end up mutilated."_

~Chuck Palahniuk, _Invisible Monsters_

* * *

Pandemonium. The first shot had been fired, shattering the illusion of romance, of peace, on this dusky Valentine's night.

_St. Valentine can cure the blind_, the blonde girl had told her. Except Louise couldn't see, couldn't see anything save for the outwardly creeping puddle of blood accumulating beneath the dead actor's body. Was this what she had meant? The shattering of her illusions about Jack, about his true motives? She had never been his plan, his grand finale, the ace up his sleeve – all this time, all those months of mental and physical torture at his hands, and it had been _her_, Harleen Quinzel, that he had been planning to use.

What _was_ she? What did she, Louise, mean to him? What was the point of keeping her around all this time, torturing her, following her, fucking her? Was it punishment? Did he feel as though she _deserved_ this hell for abandoning him, for all the other men she'd held close to her?

Was she a joke, some sort of closure for a past long buried, a cure for the boredom that consumed him those long winter nights? Why had he wasted so much time, so much energy, in dragging her in and out of his schemes when all along he had Harleen Quinzel slathering over him for a chance to do his bidding? What had been the _point_?

"Come on, chickens, don't fly the coop now!" Harleen called out to the shrieking, hysterical legions of Gotham's upper-crust. "We've only just started the show."

Several gunshots fired farther away. Louise, from her prison beneath the stage, guessed that the Joker had gone all out on this one – all his men were arming the doors with heavy weaponry, no doubt keeping the crowd in check long enough to witness whatever it was he was about to do. Hush. It had to do with Hush, and that was certain. Was Thomas Elliot still in the crowd, or had he managed to slip away unnoticed? Her eyes flickered uneasily to the man in the corner, barely breathing, shifting position only to better hear what was happening above. There was no way she would be able to over-power him – it was obvious he was unstable in addition to armed and considerably larger than her. Before Harleen Quinzel had entered the picture, Louise had still held out hope that the Joker might find her, come pull her out of the latest mess she'd fallen into. It was their cyclic, never-ending routine, or so she had believed. Harleen Quinzel had changed the game.

After relative calm – or overwhelming, paralyzing terror – had been achieved, the Joker spoke for the first time that night. He began by clearing his throat, long and exaggerating; Harleen giggled. Louise felt like punching her fist right through the ceiling.

"Tough crowd," the Joker drawled in his clear, piercing voice. Silence settled over the theater, an awe that left Gotham's elite cowering in their Christian Louboutins, their Armani suits. Somewhere out there, Sydney White was shivering in fear. Louise felt cold and clammy at the thought of her old, dear friend at the receiving end of one of the Joker's bullets.

Louise's eyes were trained on the ceiling. The Joker stood his ground, feet planted firmly, posture threatening and commanding. Harleen's light tread flitted around the stage, alternately skipping and shuffling from place to place, as if she could no more keep still than she could return to her old life, a life that might have held the steady promise of happiness before she met the Joker.

"You all paid so _much_ for these tickets. Why waste them? Some . . . dreary old play about chastity belts – _No_. You deserve something _better_. Something _un_predictable. What's the point of watching the show if you know how it . . . ahem . . . ends?"

Another gunshot fired; an awful, grating wail of despair from a woman.

"Oops! Sorry, Puddin'. Itchy trigger finger." Harleen paused, probably for effect, before adding, "I promise I'll buy you a new mayor. I think I broke that one for good."

The Joker laughed at this, a gleeful whoop of approval that Louise had never heard before – it was almost like _pride_. Her stomach felt queasy, and she briefly reflected on whether she'd be shot on the spot if she vomited. It became twice as hard to keep from retching.

"Truth is, gents – _ladies –_"

The Joker made the ceiling creak as he bent at the waist in what Louise could only assume was a sarcastic bow towards the overly painted society matrons sitting in the front row. Their opera attire probably cost as much as one of Lola's treatments, and oh, Louise knew how much Jack hated them all, all these people who did nothing as his sister died. These people who did nothing as Gotham, the city that bred him, created him, took his limbs between the teeth and mauled, mauled, mauled until there was nothing left but a bloody, broken monster. Gotham was Jupiter and Jack had been his son, helpless in the hands of the father who bred him.

"I know you've all been anxiously a-way-ting my next _grand_ plan. How I'm gonna . . . blow you away this time. I thought about so many things. Explosives. Poison. Air raids. A gladiator arena. Not good enough. What do you get a city that has _everything_?" His voice darkened at the word, dipped so low and became so menacing that even Louise, removed from the wrathful, smoldering eyes, was terrified. "It wasn't until I met Harley here that things _clicked_. Tell 'em, slugger."

"We're a matching pair!"

Several people gasped aloud. What is the only thing worse than a Joker?

Two.

"Aren't you glad I ruined your play, now?" the Joker asked chidingly. Louise could almost see his head tilting to the side, mouth turning downwards just slightly, as if speaking to misbehaving children. "_Now_ that we all get to share this _special_ day together? Out with the old, _in_ with the new!"

Harleen picked up the conversation easily.

"All you kids have been real blind, thinkin' Hush could ever outsmart someone as clever as my Mistah J. We may be fools – but we aren't chumps. Looks like the joke's on you, baby."

The crowd shrieked; Louise knew that Harleen was pointing a gun out into sea of people, directly at Thomas Elliot, though most people sitting around him wouldn't have any idea it was _him_ they were pointing at. Her heart raced and then stilled to a near halt as she waited for the blow to fall, for Hush to drop dead and take her with him. The man in the corner let out what sounded like a guttural, choked back chuckle. Louise cast a terrified glance to where he sat, weapon pointed directly at her heaving chest.

It wasn't over, yet – Hush still had his move, and just at the last moment, he made it. Perhaps it took that long for one of his men to break free and take control of the lights, perhaps it was meant to stop the Joker in his tracks just as he believed he had won. The stage flushed deep, dusky blue, a color that demonstrated clearly that it wasn't the Joker's mark. Louise wasn't aware of what the lighting change had done, but startled cries rose from the audience immediately. Harleen's light steps plodded over to stand by the Joker, whose stoic form had bent at the knees, bringing him closer to the floor, closer to her. If only she could reach up and place her hand on the boards, just barely touch it – surely Jack would feel it, _Jack_, who understood so much.

_But this isn't Jack_, Louise had to remind herself. This was the Joker, the Joker with his shiny new girlfriend and her lilting, winsome manner of speech, the sharp-edged intelligence stifled just beneath the surface, quelled by desperation for an unreachable man. This woman changed things.

"'If I die, she dies with me,'" Harleen read out in a clear, trilling voice. Louise felt her heart leap into her throat and pulse there, surely more strongly than it had ever pulsed. How funny it was that – when death seemed unavoidable – your body felt most alive. "Hmmph. We'll see about that, pretty boy."

She spun on her heel, so fast and nimble that Louise was barely able to register what was happening; Harleen Quinzel was firing the shot that would kill Thomas Elliot, kill her. He had said himself that he would bet his life that the Joker would save her – he just hadn't anticipated Harleen's misinterpretation of the words. Or perhaps he had. Perhaps he had wanted this misunderstanding to lead to Louise's death, so that in the end, only the Joker could be held responsible for driving a woman insane for his own means.

Louise dodged behind a metal prop that might have been the Tin-Man once just as Harleen fired her shot. Dust billowed from the ceiling as an impact shook the stage, and for a moment Louise, disoriented, afraid, and cornered, truly believed that she'd been shot and that her entire world had trembled from the force of it.

Screams, scrambling from the audience. The man in the corner rose to his feet at the sound of the shot and approached, staring avidly down at something in his hand that resembled a pocket watch. Just above her, Louise heard the Joker's voice, but it was deeper, less forced, more desperate.

"You _idiot_!"

"Puddin', I'm sorry, honest, I didn't know you cared so much about Hush, okay, I just –"

The sound of his hand as it hit her made Louise flinch, recoil. This sort of brutality from Jack was new, something too reminiscent of his father to sit well with her. The worst part of it was that Harleen apologized to him in a way that suggested it was normal behavior, a common interaction between the two of them. Harleen sniffled quietly away on the floor above Louise's head even as the Joker scrambled to his feet.

It should be a victory for Louise; it should afford her some satisfaction. But it didn't feel as though she had won. Harleen Quinzel, a woman who used to be a gymnast, who made it through college and at least a little of medical school, who landed a job at a high-ranking asylum – this woman was still curled into a ball of shaking self-loathing directly above her.

It should be a victory, but all Louise felt was a deep, aching sense of loss for somebody she never knew, for somebody she knew too well.

She was not, however, so overcome by her own pangs of empathy to forget her own predicament. It was obvious that Hush had been shot, and whether or not he died from that wound would seal Louise's fate. It was not her intention to sit around waiting for such a thing to happen. For all she knew, Thomas Elliot was only a shaky last breath away from falling into Hell. Desperately, Louise looked around for anything she might use to her advantage. Wilting cardboard boxes, fluffy, moth-ridden costumes – There, not three feet away, stacked precariously up to the stage floor.

The throbbing heart within her throat stilled as her foot kicked out, colliding directly with an unsteady pile of jagged-edged wooden stage props.

Louise did not wait to make sure her guard was incapacitated by her little stunt; she assumed that the distraction would be enough for her to dart around an old fifties-style diner jukebox and make a dash for the door. It worked until she reached the door, twisting her ankle in her heels as she slid on what appeared to be a ripped outfit from _Cats_. Another gunshot pierced through the darkness, this time so close to her that she cried out with pain; the noise was deafening in such a small space, almost disorienting enough to make her lose her head completely. Luckily, the pile of wood she'd pushed over onto Hush's man had lessened the madman's aim – the bullet went straight through the regal back of an armchair with stuffing popping out of its seat.

Above her, just as her palsy fingers managed to unlatch the door, the Joker fell to his knees and yanked violently at the trap door leading the hidden room beneath the stage.

She escaped into the narrow hallway and half-crawled up the dimly-lit staircase, emerging – finally – into a lighted area where dressing room doors lined the walls. She took a moment to pull off her shoes, a bit too small for her feet, and toss them into a corner. The moment it wasted would be well worth it once she started sprinting, but where would she go? No doubt the Joker's men were surrounding the building, and she looked like nothing more than a frazzled opera attendee who had somehow escaped the Joker's show. If she stayed, Hush's man might free himself and come after her to fulfill his duty to his boss.

Worse than that was the possibility that the Joker would find her first. It was her carelessness, her flight, that had caused all this. The Joker would be furious that he had been upstaged by Hush at such a pivotal moment, when all of Gotham's elite were watching, complete slaves to his madness. This night was supposed to be his grand reveal; it was the night Harley Quinn was showcased, unveiled for all the world to see, and Louise had ruined it.

Shivering with fear, Louise pulled up her gown and started to run. Through hallways lined with light fixtures made to look like old-fashioned oil lamps; past an open dressing room door where the real Juliet lay dead on the floor, her beautiful hair fanned out across the floor and her white nightgown soaked through with blood; up stairs that went on and on and on.

After a few minutes, she heard footsteps behind her, and this only increased her frenzy.

There was no real logic to her escape. In her muddled, frantic mind, Louise figured that the Joker's men were _least_likely to be guarding the roof. She had a half-baked idea that included finding the fire escape once she got up there and making her way down the back of the building, and it seemed like a workable plan. Certainly, there was no alternative, and with a pursuer on her heels, she couldn't take the time to think rationally about who would be waiting at the _bottom_ of that fire escape.

Bursting into the cool night air was like being born again. Louise stumbled over herself to get towards the edge of the building, but the height of the opera house gave her a distinct sense of vertigo, and she fell backwards, trembling.

"_You_ cause a lot more trouble than you're worth."

Above them, the blunt sound of helicopter blades sliced through the night air. A bright beam of light illuminated the opera house's entrance, but for the moment, she and the Joker were utterly alone.

"Is Hush dead?" she whispered tremulously as an answer.

"I, uh, wouldn't know. But his hired gun is."

Louise bowed her head at his words. Another death. How many people would die as she stood waiting for a dead man to return to her?

"Turn around."

The command was sharp, guttural, and pierced with a queer mixture of fury and relief. In the second between the bowing of her head in acceptance and pulling herself to her feet, Louise seriously considered throwing herself from the top of the opera house, ending all of it in one, short, glorious fight.

The desire passed as quickly as it came, and Louise turned to meet the Joker's smoldering glare.

"What d'ya think I should _do_ with you, hmm? Break more bones? Slit your pretty . . . little . . .throat?"

His gloved hand snapped outwards, towards her neck, and Louise stumbled backwards against the stone wall lining the roof's edge. The Joker's manic laughter cut through the night at her reaction.

"I—I _know_! I'll let Harley loose on you. How about that, toots? You gals can fight it out for – for me!"

And his laughter consumed him again, shaking his body with its intensity. Minutes passed, what seemed like hours, and still he was doubled over, clutching at the stitches in his side as his limbs convulsed with mirth.

"What the hell is she to you? Are we both just," Louise paused, hands gesturing at him beseechingly, before she found her words, "just your _pawns?_ Are we your toys?"

"_Toys_," the Joker rumbled, wiping tears from the corner of one eye and baring his teeth at her through the darkness, "are _fun_. You're no_t_."

"So why, then? Why keep me around, huh? Why the hell are you still playing with me if you have her? What's the use of having _both_ of us?"

The copter was closer, now, kicking up air as it circled the opera house. The roof was dark and quiet, however, and the Joker did not even twitch. He was unafraid of the police, undaunted by capture. What must it be like to be so fearless? What must it be like to know that, even if you were caught, no prison could hold you?

A spotlight swept over them, lighting up the darkest places of the roof as the helicopter turned in the sky, its blades crying out dull _thwop-thwops_ of retreat.

The Joker's body stiffened. His visage warped from terribly irritated to gleeful, exultant. Louise stepped backwards, cowering from the extreme hunch of his shoulders, the tautening of his muscles, the slow drag of tongue across his blood-red lips and scars. At his sides, the leather of his gloves squeaked as his fingers curled inwards. He was staring directly at her, eyes dark and clouded, but he seemed to be looking past her, through her, as if she did not, had never, existed.

Never in her life had she seen him like this, so wild and unreachable and otherworldly.

"I've . . . been waiting such a long time for you," the Joker said, and his voice too was different. It was almost a purr, almost as lyric as the drag of bow across taut violin string.

Louise shuddered. She remembered this voice, that dense ache of emotion in his words – she had heard that tone when he spoke to her as they were making love, teenagers drowning themselves in one another. It was Jack at his rawest, the most open and gaping portion of his soul. And it wasn't directed at her.

Behind the Joker, the shadows bled and separated, warped into a thousand different monsters from Louise's worst childhood nightmares and then took shape. She could not stifle her gasp when she saw him, armor-plated and black as night, cowl masking the top half of his face but failing to conceal the angry gash of his mouth.

"It's been a while, Bats."

Batman had no intention of engaging in any witty repartee with the Joker; with the skill and ease of an assassin, the masked man charged at his garish opponent, gloved-and-metal-plated fist whistling through the air where the Joker's head had been just seconds before.

The Joker dodged him with ease, twisting his lanky body out of the way as if he had known, before it had happened, exactly what Batman was going to do. His nimble feet carried him away from the Bat even as the masked man aimed several more punches at the clown in front of him. Louise watched, speechless and paralyzed.

It was almost like a carefully orchestrated dance, she thought numbly.

"Are you _mad_ at me?" the Joker teased after a particularly brutal right hook caught him in the jaw and sent him stumbling into an air conditioning vent.

"I won't let you treat this city like your personal funhouse, Joker." Another punch, this time to the gut, and the Joker hooted with gritty, winded laughter even through the pain.

The Joker's words, full of months of pent-up aggression and, Louise realized numbly, _rejection_, were their own attack. "Oh _really? _Where were you four months ago? Maybe you didn't notice, but, uh – that's _exactly _what I've been doing."

"It stops here. Tonight. You've gone too far. That woman was an innocent, and you've turned her into a monster."

"She _loved_ it –"

A direct hit, knuckles to mouth, and the Joker went tumbling backwards, blood dripping down his chin. He looked almost vampiric, less farce and more fiend.

"No more! These people don't deserve this!"

The Joker wheezed through his busted lip, legs scrambling outwards over the pebbly surface of the roof as he tried to stand, coat tails flapping in the wind around his long, powerful legs. Batman stood like a balustrade, impervious and unyielding.

The Joker wiped at his mouth, smearing blood onto his white-painted cheek. "You think . . . this was for _them_? Bats, Bats . . . Don't you know?"

With the energy and force of a much larger, fitter man, the Joker ducked low and charged at Batman, taking him down in a classic football tackle and then pinning him to the ground. Blow after furious blow rained down on the masked man as the Joker pummeled him, a more violent and persistent beating than Louise had ever witnessed. She felt lost, weak and useless in light of the scene in front of her; it was as if two gods were settling their differences before her very eyes. If she hadn't known any better, she might have thought they had fallen from the cloud-darkened night sky and continued their epic battle on mortal soil, heedless of the pitiful humans they would destroy in the process.

But Batman was trained, he was stronger – with one brutal sideswipe the resilient man struck the Joker's temple with his armor-plated and jagged forearm, sending the clown sprawling sideways in a flurry of plum-colored limbs. His head was bleeding, now, hair dark and clumped, but the Joker was still laughing, still gleeful.

He tried to get his footing again, reached for something within the deep pockets of his purple coat, but the Batman wasn't playing by his usual rules – even Louise knew this, and it frightened her. She saw the way the Joker's eyes widened, pupils dilating in surprise, as the man grabbed the clown by his lurid collar and punched him once, twice, three, four, _five_ furious times in the temple.

Before the sixth blow fell, the Joker's knees were bent, his body sagging, suspended only by Batman's iron grip. His eyes were unfocused, his temple matted with blood, but his smile – it was radiant, quavering but victorious.

All at once, through her choking fear, Louise understood.

The blonde girl kicking out her feet as she twirled in his chair.

_You know who he is, don't you, Louise? You know who he is. _

Thomas Elliot's steel-eyed glare as he spoke about his childhood friend. The way Bruce Wayne's name fell like glass from his lips and crashed into the forest floor.

Hush's vendetta for Bruce Wayne, worthless playboy billionaire.

The dark shadows beneath of his eyes, his hollowed cheeks, his money, the murder of his parents. The deaths of Rachel Dawes and Harvey Dent. The attempted murder of Thomas Elliot, the only person still standing at Bruce Wayne's side.

Bruce Wayne's guilt. Bruce Wayne.

And behind it all, Fate, forever twisting the destinies of two young men. Bruce Wayne's parents had kept Jack Napier's sick sister alive just long enough to push the desperate young man over the edge, just long enough to break him. And now, now, Fate had entangled them once more, knotted their histories and futures together so tightly that neither could escape.

It took her breath away; it broke her heart.

"Stop! You'll kill him! You can't – you _can't_! He'll win, don't you see? _This is what he wants_."

Before the sixth blow fell, Batman's fist stopped, suspended just inches away from the Joker's bloodied, triumphant face. The clown laughed, a low, gurgling sound deep within his throat. He spat out blood, rivulets of it. Louise felt her stomach turn.

"She's right. I can't let you destroy me like you destroyed Harvey Dent – I won't." Batman's breathing was haggard; his deep, rasping voice grated, forced itself out through his mouth. Louise thought of his true voice, that smooth, deep, aristocratic charm he exuded so casually in the light.

"I . . . have to be better than this. I have to be better . . . than you."

With a dawning sense of her own absolute insignificance, Louise watched as the two true sons of Gotham stared each other down. This meeting – this rivalry – was more than chance. She understood. The Joker didn't know who Bruce Wayne was, could not fathom the way their lives had touched and overlapped, but he had been aware all along that the connection existed. They were more than enemies.

"Don't you get it, Bats?" the Joker wheezed out. "I . . . _am_ you."

And with a final, half-strength blow, Batman dropped the Joker's limp, unconscious body to the ground.

He turned to look at her, then, his shadowy eyes unspeakably sad and defeated.

"Let me help you. There are places you can go where even he won't be able to find you."

Louise stared at him for a long time, solid and unmoving.

"I know. But I can't run away now. Not yet. Not until . . ."

She couldn't finish her sentence, and the implications of her rambling words weighted down the atmosphere around them. She knew he was wondering how she had become entangled with such a man, knew he was wondering just what sort of woman she was, and she wished she could tell him all of it, every last bit. She wanted to kiss his hand and lay his weary body down to rest and let him know exactly who his fiercest rival had been. She wanted to tell him about Lola, about how Jack had loved her.

Off in the distance, perhaps three buildings away, an explosion rocked the street. Batman whipped his head around to look at the fire licking the horizon.

"It's her. You should go, catch her. She's a thousand times more deadly than he is, right now."

Perhaps it was that he couldn't trust himself not to finish the job; Louise couldn't think of another reason why he heeded her words, disappearing into the night as quietly and effectively as he had appeared.

It wasn't long until the door to the roof scraped open and a timid man in a clown mask crept out to find her kneeling beside the Joker. In his hand, he held a gun. When he pulled off his clown mask, she saw his gaunt face, the hollow cheeks and bulging, shifty eyes, and knew he had killed police officers to clear a path for the Joker to escape.

With the Joker's limp body dangling between them, Thomas Schiff and Louise dragged him away from the scene of his crime.


	35. Chapter 35

A/N: So, I haven't been getting great feedback on the whole Death Note/Veronica Mars story. Or lots of it. Maybe it's just a bad idea, I dunno. But anway, if you haven't checked that poll out, please do. It'd be very helpful to me to know what everybody thinks! This chapter has been written for a whileee now, and I can't wait to see what you guys think of it. Enjoy this one. After this, there are only TWO more chapters. It's almost over, folks.

* * *

_I met a woman, she had a mouth like yours, she knew your life,_

_She knew your devils and your deeds, and she said,_

"_Go to him, stay with him if you can, but be prepared to bleed."_

~ James Blake, _A Case of You_, Joni Mitchell cover

* * *

The Joker's body was frighteningly cold and limp as Louise hauled him into their old room, using the last reserves of her dwindling strength to pull him onto the dirty mattress Thomas Schiff had commissioned for this very occasion. Louise didn't doubt it belonged to the man himself – the Joker had so warped the broken minds of some of his followers that they would do anything for him, go without all the basic comforts of modern life just to serve him, to work in his presence. Thomas Schiff was the perfect example of this. Schiff inhabited a frayed version of reality wherein the Joker was something akin to a god, and Schiff would sooner die than let down such a man. This was probably the reason for Schiff's freedom; the Joker rewarded those who were unfailingly loyal to him. Schiff's loyalty was what made all of this possible.

The mattress's uneven lumpiness assailed her as she collapsed at the top of it; the Joker's limbs splayed out exactly where she let them drop, bloodied head lolling listlessly to the side. Louise bent forward frantically to check his pulse, to listen, terrified, for the faintest wisp of breath hissing from his nostrils. His breathing was so slow and soft; it took her a horrified two minutes to detect it, and when she did, she was disgusted by the surge of relief she experienced.

Even if she could not wish him dead, Louise knew that feeling _relief_ over the Joker's continued existence was yet another show of her own weakness. The death of the man in front of her would be a blessing to Gotham, to the millions upon millions who called this city home and wanted nothing more than a safe life for their families. His death – Jack's death – would come as a welcome reprieve to everybody but herself.

Everybody but herself and, perhaps, Bruce Wayne. Bruce Wayne, the heir to the largest undeserved fortune in the world. Bruce Wayne, son of the only two people besides herself and Jack who had ever contributed anything to Lola's survival. Bruce Wayne, the Batman, the man engaged in an endless, fruitless struggle with Jack Napier, a man he would never know he'd been inextricably entwined with since a nine year old little girl in the Narrows had fallen terminally ill.

Perhaps that man would feel remorse if the Joker died, for Louise was certain murder was not Batman's aim; because of that, he had not hit to kill. Because of that, the Joker, despite his injuries, was still alive and, with time, would recover fully.

And so this was her fate – Batman had been the last source of redemption for Louise, the last bitter hope she possessed for escape from this hell she was living in, and she had turned him down. Cold licked at the bare skin of her legs beneath her opera gown, taunting her with tongues of ice. She was utterly alone, now, an outcast from decent society, from _indecent_ society, and what did she have to show for it? A shallowly breathing clown passed out cold on a dirty mattress? Was this what she had given her life up for?

With a grimace of self-loathing, Louise turned her anguished gaze upon the Joker. It struck her that she had never seen him sleeping, hardly saw him for a moment when his body was at rest – he was constantly moving, a live wire snapping back and forth, sparking at the ends. Now, though, he rested, and with a tremble, Louise remembered exactly how he looked eleven years ago, a young man spread out next to her in sleep. The tousled blond hair, those expressive lips turned down at the edges, the worried wrinkle he got between his eyes when he dreamed – these things consumed her utterly, wracking her body with the sort of grief she still did not fully understand.

How could she mourn him so completely, miss him so ardently still, when he was right in front of her, literally _there_? It didn't seem fair that she should have to have the burden of both a grieving heart and a tortured soul. How had things become so twisted, so evil? They had had so much _promise_, and his mind . . . God, his mind was still brilliant, always had been brilliant, and with the right means he might have shaped it into something truly spectacular, a positive force to be reckoned with. Not this, not _this_!

Palsy hands reached forward to trace the ugly ridges of his scars, one of the many parts of himself he kept locked away from her prying hands and eyes. The littlest finger on his right hand twitched as Louise explored his deformity, the horrendous wounds that had aided and abetted his descent into complete madness. The truth was, the scars did not disgust her – the greasepaint, the horrid mask he slathered onto his skin, _that_ disgusted her. The scars, though, they made her _ache_. Those puckered, arcing gashes were the ultimate outward indication of Jack's fall, his isolation from the rest of humanity, his endless suffering. Louise had not been present when Johnny Sabatino took a knife to the beautiful, slightly hollowed cheeks of her boy, but they painted the picture so vividly on their own.

The Joker's eyelashes fluttered, startling Louise. She saw only the briefest flash of the white of his eyes before he fell still and unmoving again, head lolling in the opposite direction, exposing the bloodied expanse of his right temple. The right side of his face was caked with blood from temple to chin, streaks of muddy brown staining his violet collar and the soft material of his emerald vest. Louise gathered up enough supplies to clean his would, trudging through their old abode numbly. To placate herself, Louise pretended she was getting bandages and antiseptic cream for Jack the night he'd come home with a bullet hole through his arm. Even that horrible memory, just days before he'd been pronounced dead to her, was comforting in light of her current situation.

With the iron resolve of a war nurse, Louise approached the Joker's prone body and knelt at his side with a bowl full of lukewarm water and the cleanest scrap of cloth she could find. Gently, so as not to wake him, Louise wet the rag and began the sensitive task of cleaning greasepaint and blood from human skin.

She started at the temple, watching with detached fascination as the green-tinged strands of hair turned the same dark-brown as they would after Jack showered. The Joker still did not stir; the violent blow dealt to him and his ever-present state of exhaustion seemed to have culminated into an oblivious sleep. Louise didn't doubt that, when lucid and uninjured, the Joker was an alert and edgy sleeper. How could a man such as this be anything but? Now, however, she had free reign to do whatever she pleased – she could leave, even, and he wouldn't know that she had gone until she was halfway to France.

Instead, she continued cleaning the Joker's wound. The flicker of fascination she felt turned into a spark the moment a smudge of greasepaint came off with the blood on his cheekbone, revealing the same smooth, beige skin she remembered from childhood. Shaking with an undefined fear, like that of a small child who had done something wrong but couldn't understand just what it was, Louise stared down at her white-smeared rag in stupefaction. For a moment, foolish thoughts like 'What if I repaint over it before he finds out?' flashed through her mind.

She sat inactive for a long moment simply staring down at the eerily still man in the eerily still apartment they had once called their own. Then, carried away by a slow-burning defiant fever, Louise touched the edge of her washcloth to a patch of white-painted skin and stroked down, gently at first and then harder as the makeup began to smear. It was tedious work, that single stroke; oil-based paint was like a permanent paste on the skin, but Louise's sickness, that maddening urgency to strip him bare, was rising to a fever pitch within her gut. It felt like bile in her throat, not excitement; there was only sickening satisfaction as the paint came away, the disgusted feeling one gets when squeezing pus from a zit. Ever present, pressing on the nerves behind her eyes, within her ears, there was the niggling feeling that in doing this she had lost somehow; a dishonorable, grudging win at best, for despite how she had tried, the Joker had not given her this on his own. She was taking it; taking it in, perhaps, a way he himself would have approved of, but stealing it nonetheless, a perversion of the way things ought to be. Even in unconsciousness, the Joker beat her at her own game.

The white went first, then black, all the while skirting around those angry bulbous smears of red that outlined his scars, accentuated them until they were massive pools of blood just festering on his cheeks. Louise avoided these studiously, like a child who truly fears the molten burn of his floor amidst a playful game. Before venturing to touch even the corner of his scars, Louise removed the black from the glossy eyelids, felt the pliant, vulnerable curve of his eyeball shift beneath the papery thinness of his skin. Away went the dark smudges, leaving shadows behind that suggested exhaustion, sickness, but miraculously revealed another familiarity – the golden tinge of his eyelashes, spattered brightness within the dark. How long had it been since another human being had seen this trait, touched the delicate tracery of veins on his eyelids with his or her fingertips? Impossible as it was to think of her eighteen-year-old self as the last, she preferred it to the thought of another woman, another lover a few years after her, pulled close to cure the loneliness of a wayward, nomadic man.

Louise sat back on her knees and stared down at the Joker's face, half-exposed. Her stomach quivered, lurched uneasily; she felt the sudden urge to vomit. To the rest of the world who knew nothing of the man the Joker had been, his makeup was a curse, something made of nightmares that trussed up a regular man and turned him into a devil. To her, it was nothing more than his mask, the thing he wore to shrield his true self from the public. The less he wore the more she saw the scars, the true scars beneath the paint that were more horrible than the exaggerated form he presented to the public.

She removed the paint from the right side first, revealing the more artful of his deformities, the straighter, curving scar that stretched up to the middle of his cheek.

Next, the lips, a break from the steady stream of _Oh, God, what did he do to you, what did Johnny do to you, Jack? _Her fingers tugged at the flesh, pulling away full lips to reveal red gums, paint-smeared teeth, yellowed from coffee and neglect but naturally straight. Jack had had some of the finest teeth in the Narrows in his youth, the unknowing envy of all those who so desperately needed braces and yet could not afford them. Those teeth had been exposed so rarely; he had had so few occasions to show off his lovely smile, and now . . . now she wiped away the remainder of the paint as if she were wiping away the fresh blood from his wounds.

Louise allowed herself only a moment to close her eyes as she washed away the paint from the left scar, bluntly ended and painful to look at; this one had been rough, hacked into the skin and sewn back together without finesse. After she was done, she checked his pulse, his responsiveness – his breathing was steady, unaffected by her various pokes and prods. That fantastic mind was taking advantage of this period of rest, and it was only by chance that Louise benefited from it. The Joker had no idea that, when he woke, he would look like Jack Napier once again.

The face was too much, it wasn't enough – despite the scars that marred his beautiful cheeks, once slightly hollowed and smooth, Louise could recognize all of the tiny perfections that had once enthralled her. The lax mouth, almost sensuous, turned down at the edges. The small laugh lines that were etched into the outer edges of his eyes. The curl of his hair over one ear.

It wasn't enough, not after seeing him like this. Jack, Jack – if he had any idea how much she'd searched for him in those long, lonely years, how many men she'd undressed with feverish, clawing hands, only to come up empty, empty, empty! It was beyond her power to stop where she was. The clothes would have to go, too, then. Just to see him, to rid him of his costume, his disguise, the impeccably tailored guise in which he hid the truth of his humanity. He thought he was so clever, truly he did, and it fooled most, enthralled at least one. But not her, never her – she had been the first to see him bare and vulnerable, wearing only the skin he'd been born in. By all rights, she should have been the last, but that was a privilege that had been stolen from her. No, she couldn't stop. The clothes would have to go.

Knot, tie, vest, suspenders. He was meticulously put together, expensively dressed, incredibly satirical in his presentation. Her bitten fingernails grappled with monogrammed buttons as she tore away his clothing, the hideous garb that hid him from her. The patterned shirt was familiar, but the white undershirt was not. Plain cotton, soft against her fingertips, a bit grey under his arms from overuse and smeared at the collar by red greasepaint.

He was down to his shirt and purple slacks, now, suspenders dangling limply at his sides. His limbs were fanned out across the bed, long legs sprawling and arms flung out at odd angles from the contortions she was putting him through, stripping him as she was. The rage she would experience when he woke would be astronomical, Louise reflected numbly. Numbly because, God, because when she clenched a handful of his shirt in her fist the hem would ride up, and she realized that the Joker still had skin beneath his costume.

It was like the thin paper rip on a Christmas present that revealed a sliver of word – nothing short of nuclear war could have stopped Louise from slipping her cold hands beneath his hem and pushing up his shirt. She did it slowly, half because the reality of what she was doing was sinking in – undressing him against his will as he was unconscious, of all things – and half because she didn't honestly believe she could stand to take in all of him at once.

His skin was paler than she remembered it, no longer exposed to the sun negligently on hot summer afternoons in the Narrows. The soft, curling hair at his navel was much the same, if not slightly more abundant than when he was seventeen, and after several minutes of simply stroking the silky expanse of his bellybutton Louise had convinced herself she'd found perfect happiness.

A staple of humanity is our greed, and Louise was no exception to this rule – in a short time she grew anxious to progress, hiking up the white shirt to find things that were not just as she left them.

More scars. An ugly gash arcing like a crescent moon stood out on one side, sewn together masterfully, most likely by his own hand. A burn withered the skin of his left shoulder in the shape of a dandelion, wayward seeds blowing outwards to cover a bit of collarbone. What looked like a stab wound had cut a horizontal line low on his stomach – further examination raised doubts, however, and Louise experienced a quiet sort of laugh as she realized that the Joker's appendix had been removed. How Mother Earth must laugh at us all, comical little figures puffing out our tiny chests and pretending to be gods. Even the Joker was governed by the laws of nature, of biology – and perhaps this was what he wanted everybody to understand. Our power, our money, the importance we believe we have – it amounts to nothing, yes, nothing, in the face of the pure chaos of probability, chance.

Louise sighed deep and slow. The pants came next, but only because she had finished with her foolish examination, and was now preparing to face the Joker's wrath at having his disguise ruined via his unconsciousness and her complete moral degradation. Louise suspected the knife sheath attached to his upper thigh by one slender belt; the whimsical, polka dot boxer shorts came as a bit of a surprise. She had to hand it to Jack – he did do the damn thing thoroughly.

The weapon she discarded of, exiting the room to shove the wickedly sharp tool into some forgotten air vent. When she returned, his eyes were open, blinking blearily up at her silhouette in the doorway. The thought of running crossed her mind, but where to, anyhow? What was the point? Time to accept her fate; accept that she would never be rid of Jack Napier for as long as she lived. With the determined expression of a martyr, Louise knelt at the Joker's side and waited for the spitting rage, the blows, the threats. His breathing whistled shallowly from his abused nose; it took him a very long time to gather his muddled thoughts together to form a cohesive sentence.

"She's . . . dead. Isn't she?"

Louise did not react to this confused sentence, struggling with every vestige of willpower left to appear put-together and unaffected, at least on the surface.

"Who's dead, Jack?"

He might have said a thousand different names, of course, among which her own could have featured, except they knew each other well enough to guess what he would say.

"Lola."

Lola, and her heart broke. The first time his dead sister's name had passed his lips in this state; perhaps it was a testament to the power of his disguise that, once it was stripped from him, he was able to utter the single word he hadn't the strength to say as that monster. Lola, a sacrament of her very own, something the truly evil could not touch. Lola, who belied the worst vices of the human spirit, whose memory kept Louise from lying through her teeth, just to see if it would bring Jack back to her for only a moment.

"Yes. Yes, Lola's dead."

An outward breath, a wilting sound, a crinkle between his brows. What had his initial reaction been to the announcement of his sister's death? How long after he had received these scars had it come? A day, a week, a month? Louise closed her eyes and tried to summon up an image of Jack, the particular way in which he had existed at seventeen, and found that the memory of him was slipping away from her, not fading but rather merging with this twisted version of himself that she was kneeling beside. And, oh, she missed him already, the real him, the him she preferred to remember.

"You should sleep more," Louise said tersely, biting the inside of her lip until it bled to keep from displaying more emotion, upsetting the delicate balance they were experiencing. If she disturbed him in any way, woke him up, startled him . . . then, the rage would break. No longer would she be dealing with a confused, injured man.

Her idea seemed appealing to him; his brows relaxed, forehead smoothed over, eyelids flickered wearily. In his lethargic state, his head lolled to one side, bleary, exhausted eyes staring up at her through the darkness. The edges of his mouth twitched upwards, a flash of teeth exposed as he managed a weak grin.

"Look at you," he whispered. She felt like pulling back, because after months of torment Louise had finally started to become accustomed to the Joker, the new self Jack Napier was parading around, and this was not him. Not his voice, not the look in his eyes, not the softness in his touch as he placed his hand on her bended knee. "Still . . . _here_."

Deep breath, exhale, stave off the tears; her frown trembled like his voice as she reached out and touched his face, that once beautiful face, and replied, "Of course. Where else would I be?"

This was the truth of the matter, the reason she had turned down the possibility of freedom, of a new life with a new name and maybe, in the future, a husband who would give her beautiful children. It was doable, as so many things are – the impossibility of it was not what stopped her from escaping this nightmare. _She_ stopped herself from it, _she_ refused to move on all those years, _she_ chose to pine over Jack and, when the Joker found her, to continue to try to save him, save his soul. It made sense, now. It all made perfect sense, just as the Joker had always told her it would, one day. She understood that there was a billion other ways this story could have ended, but that none of those mattered now because _this_ was what had happened, _this_ was their reality. Maybe it was Fate or something less explainable; Louise only knew that her future, her role in this charade, had been planned out almost from the beginning, just as Jack's was. It all went back to that one sunny afternoon, the afternoon they'd all first met. The afternoon Lola had first displayed her sickness, the afternoon Jack Napier had entered her life. Jack had been tied to Bruce Wayne from that moment, thrust down the path that would eventually result in those scars, in his insanity, in the persona he adopted. And she . . . she was always meant to follow him, shadow him. It wasn't even sad, really, that her place in this world just happened to be standing at the side of a disturbed man for as long as she possibly could. Every person has his or her own role, his or her own niche to fill. Could Louise regret hers? Could she honestly tell herself that what she was doing now was wasteful, when the Joker was looking at her, at another human being, with perhaps the softest expression he had worn in eleven years?

Louise finally understood, and in a way there was a humor to it all, a sort of bitterness so exasperating it made you want to laugh. Truly, it was just tragic. They were all tragic, every one of them, Jack, Lola, Mr. and Mrs. Napier, her mother, Johnny Sabatino, Peyton Riley, Bruce Wayne, Harleen Quinzel – every person on Earth was horribly, horribly tragic simply because they _lived_.

She kissed him with an inward sigh, hands prepared to push his weary body down and insist that he sleep if he tried to rise, prepared to fight him off if the tables suddenly turned and he regained his sense of self. Neither of these things proved necessary; she wasn't even surprised when he pulled her to him, entangled his fingers around the mess of her curls and held on tightly to keep her from fleeing, from leaving his side. This wasn't him, not Jack, not the Joker – it was some muddled, fleeting version of the both of them, a phantom born from confusion and hurt.

Louise had never been one to begrudge the little that was offered to her, though.

She kissed him with an aching ferocity, knowing that this might be the only time something so unbelievable would happen. Perhaps this was the universe, God, even, finally tipping Its hat in her direction. In the morning, everything would be different. The Joker's insanity was not one that could be cured with a mere blow to the head, the utterance of his dead sister's name. No, they only had this night, but it was _hers. _For the last time in her life, Jack Napier belonged to her.

It was not her intention for the night to lead to sex; the hunger she had for the man in front of her was not made up in any meaningful part by carnal desire, and she was positive that being in unthreatening, pliant arms for an entire night would provide her perfect felicity. It was he who initiated things, discovering the zipper of her dress and pulling it down, freeing her of that horrible gown Hush had clothed her in. She kicked it to the side, hoped never to see it again and promptly went back to basking in the feeling of belonging, of the intrinsic knowledge of shared possession, of equal adoration. For the first time in eleven years, Louise looked down at the man beneath her as he stroked patterns across her hidden skin and did not feel ashamed of the act she was about to commit. This was Jack – after eleven long years of fruitless searching and unbelievable agony, she had found him.

This was their goodbye. They both could feel it – Louise with a calm, sorrowful sort of acceptance and Jack with an abstract, hazy understanding that cut clear through the muddled mess of his mind. It was evident in the way they made love, the perfect physical harmony of two people who had been made for each other from the very beginning, two minds that were no longer able to fight against the pull of the soul. No mental neuroses, no misplaced sense of moral obligation, no fear, no hatred, no disgust – how could there be any of that, how could there ever have been? With each breathless thrust, they suffered for the other, and their unspoken apologies were the same:

_I'm so sorry that I can never give you what you need. I'm so sorry that you will never be enough. _

In the silence of their old room, Jack and Louise revisited the people they had been, the lives they had occupied, the histories they had written. It was effortless, easy in a way that felt almost cruel, and Louise knew he felt it too. It was evident in the sharp crescent indents he left on her skin as he held her too tightly, too desperately, evident in the broken exhale that escaped his scarred lips whenever their eyes would meet, so tired and haunted and needy.

It was not a glorious symphony that built into a crescendo of unrestrained demonstrations of their passion; it did not, in a way, even satisfy the most fundamental part of themselves that existed. It ended slowly, half because they willed it that way and half because it hadn't been rough, hadn't been frantic. In the darkness, the soft cries of rapture that issued from their lips seemed loud, painful to hear. They felt like sobs, sounded like weeping.

That was what this was, Louise reflected as they lay entwined, on the verge of sleep. It was mutual, tearless lamentation.

* * *

He woke up in the dusky grayness of early dawn, violently, suddenly, shooting upright and gasping so loudly it grated against her ears. Through the darkness, Louise could see his heaving chest, the way his fingers were shaking as he grasped at his cheeks, at his scars. It was over.

The wildness in his eyes was back; he was himself again as he surveyed his naked body and then hers, sprawled out next to him without shame, without apology. She met his eyes defiantly, let him know with absolute clarity that _he_ had wanted this; _he_ had slipped up. She had won. Briefly, for mere hours, but as surely as they were both lying there together, Louise Speller had _won_.

The pain of the blow he delivered her hit her first, and then memory of his arm swinging out came after, as if the thing had happened in reverse. Her body had been tense, just waiting for it, but even so, it burned. Louise gritted her teeth through the pins-and-needles, the fiery sting of it. Before this night, the fact that Jack Napier had struck her would have elicited a far deeper pain, but she was beyond that now. She was beyond him, now.

"I guess we both went and did the thing we swore we'd never do, huh? We turned into our parents. I'm a whore and a you're a brute. History always seems to repeat itself."

The Joker stumbled over himself to get out of bed, falling against the wall and then pulling himself upright. His equilibrium was off from the head wound, the loss of blood, but it was clear the rest of him was functioning. The right arm was, at least, fully capable. He was shaking with fury, towering at his full height, so tense that all the muscles in his body were visible through his skin as he stood naked in front of her.

"Bad dream, sweetheart?"

A wild, cagey look warped his expression for the briefest of seconds, confirmed her suspicions exactly. Her night had been, for the first time in months, free from the disconcerting blonde girl's presence, free from rotting corpses and guilt and remorse. If only he had been so lucky, but then, he didn't deserve to be.

"Is this . . . how you get your _kicks_? Is this what _does_ it for ya? Hmm? Screwing some unconscious –"

"Oh, you were conscious. Don't play this game with me, we both know what happened last night, and you can't stand it, can you? You can't stand that I won for once, that you _let_ me win."

"Oh-ho, _feisty_. You think this _changes _things? You think it proved I-I can be _saved_?" Even without the makeup plastered on his face, the hatred transformed him – he was as indistinguishable from the Jack she'd loved as he was in that costume. "How 'bout you take another go. Why don't you try to _seduce _me, huh? Let's see who wins this time."

Louise shot the man in front of her a disdainful look, took in the powerful form of his body, a body she thought she would never have the privilege of seeing in its mature form. The broad shoulders, the narrow hips, the flaccid penis, the spidery legs – last night she had laid claim to all of it just one last time, but she'd also let it all go.

"Don't take this the wrong way, _darling_, but I don't think you could get it up right now if you tried. Funny, the things psychoses do to you."

The bark of raspy laughter her statement elicited was not tinged in the least by self-consciousness or pride, and this alone set him apart from regular men, men who would be infuriated by the suggestion that they were impotent, less of a man than they ought to be. The Joker was not defined by his masculinity, not caged by societal demands that accompanied a male sex organ.

"For you? You're righ_t_."

Louise shrugged her shoulders and stood, as equally bare; the two of them faced off, as dysfunctional as Adam and Eve themselves, and truly there must have been the devil in both of their eyes.

Louise smiled wanly. "You think that perky little intern you drove insane will? Keep kidding yourself."

Louise dipped low and scooped up her discarded opera gown, stepping into it and shimmying it up, cloaking her nakedness. The Joker made no move to reach for the scattered remnants of his suit, so innocuous and unthreatening when in pieces. He was making a point, then, letting her know that his identity didn't end at the suit, that it was something that radiated outwards from the depths of his warped mind, that he was still the Joker even while standing stark naked in front of her.

"You want me to be furious about her, the way you were about those men? I won't be. I was, when I first found out, but not anymore. Not after . . . that, whatever it was that we did last night. Don't you get it? All this time, you've been telling me that one day I'll understand, that it'll all make perfect sense, and it _has_. It has. She was right, she always is. She told me herself that St. Valentine cures the blind. I can see everything so clearly; I can see _you_ so clearly. I can see her so clearly. I know who she is. After all this time, all those dreams, I know who she is. And so do you, don't you? Lola wasn't in my dreams last night because she was in _yours_."

The tinkling laughter, the flawlessness of her sun-kissed skin, the clearness of her voice, the soft golden hair – it had all been cloaking the terminally ill girl Louise had known, had loved, because the last time she had saw Lola Napier she was two shaky breaths away from dying, bald, sunken, and bruised. It was so obvious now, so fitting that Lola was the one to warn her, to beg her to reconsider her actions, to try to reason with her. Lola told her that she had seen in the Joker's soul, in his mind, and couldn't find her brother there anymore, not in any form that would satisfy the woman who had loved him best. It had always been Lola; it could have never been anyone else.

She was met with a blank expression, no shock or derision. The emotion was trapped inside, forcefully shut away to keep her from knowing exactly what was going through his mind.

"It doesn't even matter if she exists outside of here." Louise tapped a finger against her temple and then zipped up her gown. "She affects both of us. She haunts us. Her memory is the reason last night happened, and that night." She took a cleansing breath. "It is funny, isn't it? That night opened my eyes. You'll never be able to break me the way you want to, now. The thing that'll always keep you from destroying me is _you_."

His lips twisted, scars bending unevenly to accommodate his grin.

"Wanna bet?"

Louise knew he wouldn't stop her when she left, that they would meet again, and soon, so she didn't want to waste any more energy talking –this was her role, her purpose, but she wasn't on the winning side, not destined to ride off into the burgeoning sunset. She would be there, haunting him, just as Lola continued to do each and every night the Joker succumbed to sleep. Neither of them would live fulfilled, happy lives, the lives they might have lived in another time, another universe. They would torture one another until the day they died, and, God willing, after that.

Her smile was brittle and cold, but equally powerful.

"You know, Joker? I really, really do."

She left on that high note, aware that in her wake she'd left a murderer fuming, just itching to get his revenge, to pay her back for bringing out the humanity in him for even a few hours. Each step she took became less sure, less purposeful; by the time she hit the street, Louise was faint with hunger and dizzy from the blow she'd received. And her heart, God, her heart.

She had won, the first and last time she would ever win. Louise felt in her bones that this was true, in the blood vessels zipping through her veins. She could not conquer the Joker's indomitable will any more than she could conquer death. There was so much she accepted now, so much she understood. Jack wasn't completely gone, had never truly died. Even now, after all he'd done, after the atrocities he'd committed and the state of his mind, Jack Napier could still be brought to his knees by a single heartbroken glare. There was one pair of eyes that could shame him, tear all his hatred down around his ears and demand that he become the man he should have been.

But they weren't her eyes. They were his own. They belonged to his sister.

Lola Napier was the only person who had ever lived who could have brought the Joker back from this madness, who might have been able to convince him to give it all up. Not Louise. Not Harleen Quinzel. His dead baby sister. Nobody else.

Louise understood, now. She could never not see it, again. Jack Napier could never be saved, not by her. Not by anyone.


	36. Chapter 36

**A/N:** Some of you will like this; some of you will hate it. I must state right now that any religious beliefs expressed within this story are not necessarily my own. There is **ONE** more chapter to this story after this.

I'm going to say this now: This journey has been long and incredibly rewarding, and I'm thankful to all of you who followed me through to the end, and to those who continue to read after this story is complete. I've learned so much about writing, about myself, in this process, that I really can't express it all in such a short space. So I won't. Suffice to say, you all have helped me nurse this, my baby, my pride and joy, for over three years, and I love ya'll immensely for it. : )

~ B

* * *

_I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,_  
_or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off._  
_I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,_  
_in secret, between the shadow and the soul._

_~ Pablo Neruda,_ Sonnet XVII

* * *

After leaving the Joker, Louise checked herself into a seedy motel room, bars across the window and strange stains on the mattress. She was too exhausted – mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually – to care about any of this. Louise peeled off her clothing and fell naked into the grimy bed, shivering under the lumpy covers. She tried to remember the last time she had been truly warm, inside and out, but she couldn't. Her eyes closed, and she dreamed.

* * *

"It's almost over." The blonde girl tilts her head to the side, hair rippling over her pale shoulders. For the first time, Louise can look her square in the eyes – Jack's eyes. Louise feels like weeping.

"Why didn't you tell me it was you? All this time . . ."

"Why, you think you woulda listened? _Tch_." Lola shakes her head ruefully, but Louise can tell that she's in good spirits. "You're too stubborn for that."

"You looked so different, so healthy . . . Your voice . . ." Her voice had been clear and succinct, her words articulated, not slurred, no slang. That's what she wanted to say, but after years of Lola's absence, Louise has somewhat lost the knack of speaking to her candidly.

"You heard what you wanted to hear. This is _your_ head, ya know."

They are sitting in a tiny house somewhere in Gotham. It feels familiar to her, though she is certain she has never been to this place before. They are sitting at a rickety kitchen table with steaming cups of tea in front of them. She takes a sip, but the liquid has no flavor, no substance. Lola smiles at her in an encouraging, pitying sort of way.

"Can you taste it?" This is not the question she wants to be asking, not the question she should be asking, but for some reason, it seems very important. Louise's throat feels tight as she looks down into her cup, blue floral china pattern with a chip on the handle. It is exactly like a tea set she would buy.

Lola takes a dainty sip, letting the liquid steam inside of her mouth for a long moment before she swallows. "Mm, green, with a little jasmine. Your favorite, right?"

The desperate feeling in her gut intensifies at these words. Louise looks around at her surroundings. There is brilliant, clear light streaming in from behind the lacy white curtains. She wants desperately to look outside, but the idea terrifies her, so she focuses on the wallpaper instead. It is bright and cheerful, yellow and white, the perfect space in which to cook breakfast.

Though the act is essentially meaningless, Louise picks up her cup to take another sip. Her hands shake. She takes another tasteless drink and then sets the teacup back on its little china dish. It clinks loudly.

"I'm so afraid," she whispers to Lola. To her surprise, the girl only smiles back at her reassuringly.

"Well that's stupid, isn't it? Does it look so bad?"

She wants to say that no, it doesn't look that bad, doesn't feel that bad, and yes, she is comfortable here in this house that looks so much like the home she always dreamed of having, more comfortable than she has been in months, years, a decade or more, but she doesn't say this. Louise stares miserably down into the depths of her teacup.

"This is just a dream I'm having, right? Just a dream. You're nothing but a figment of my imagination. Something I made up to make it through this . . . this hell."

"You seem pretty sure of yourself. What's there to be afraid of, then?"

Louise takes another glance at the window with its unearthly light, a shiver running through her. "What if there really is nothing, afterwards?"

Even in this dream, speaking such a fear aloud feels blasphemous.

Lola reaches out one slender hand, lacing their fingers together. Louise can feel the warmth of the girl's body more than the warmth of the sunlight streaming through the window, more than the steam coming off her tasteless tea. Lola feels concrete, real in a way the rest of the dream does not, and her eyes hold only comfort and assurance.

"I guess you won't know until after," Lola says. "I wish I could stick around, but I gotta go. I won't be seeing you in your dreams anymore."

Louise blinks in surprise, fear bubbling up in the pit of her stomach. The dreams with Lola – even before she knew it was Lola – are the only calm, hopeful element in her life. Without them, her future stretches on endlessly, bleak and torturous.

Louise reaches out to grab her young friend, but Lola is already across the room, opening the door to the backyard, awash in sunlight.

"Don't leave me," Louise pleads from her spot at the table. The tea in front of her has gone cold. "Please, you're the only thing that's kept me going. I can't face him again without you."

Her hand is on the doorknob, her foot half across the threshold. Already, Lola seems to be fading. Louise can feel the discomfort in her back and neck from sleeping on such an uncomfortable bed; she can feel the itchiness of her legs and arms from the coarse bed sheets and, most probably, the bed bugs. Her throat tightens. She wants to call out to Lola, plead with her to stay, but her voice is stuck. She is paralyzed and waking.

Lola looks heartbreakingly sad. "Don't worry," she says softly. "It's almost over."

Louise does not need to ask what she means. She already knows.

* * *

For a long time, Louise wandered aimlessly around the city. With no job, no home, and no contacts, she had very little to do besides sit and reflect, which is exactly what she did. She did not waste time in any churches, even if the desire to confess all her sins was stifling in its intensity. What good would it do her, anyway? Everybody was redeemable in the eyes of the Lord, or so she had always been told, but what if all that was just a lot of made up garbage? A bedtime story to tell the children in order to get them to be righteous, to get them to obey and behave? A pleasant source of hope to dwell on when the thought of death left you feeling breathless and panicky? Louise had given up trying to figure out what would happen afterwards. Lola was right – she would find out for herself, when the time came.

With Hush out of commission due to his injuries, the city was tense and ready for another brutal showdown between Batman and the Joker. Few people were out on the streets, and the ones that were seemed tense, terrified, or downright crazy. Louise knew she looked like one of the latter, sitting with her hands folded on her lap and staring vacantly at everything, at nothing, for hours on end. She could think of nothing but Harleen Quinzel, of Jack, of Lola, of the Joker . . . these thoughts consumed her. She cared for nothing else. When she was hungry, she ate. When she was thirsty, she drank. It felt superfluous to her, but she did it because she had nothing better to do, and she felt like disposing of what little money she had left. She had the overwhelming feeling that she wouldn't be needing it anymore.

Around noon, she started wandering towards the places she knew. She went to Wayne Enterprises and stared up at the building for a long time, and she had the strong urge to laugh. She went to some of the shops she'd gone to as a teenager with Jack and Lola, the ones that were still around, and flipped through the clothing. She went to see the wreckage of City Hall where Sara Burton had died, and she went to stand in front of her old place of employment, the front steps literally piled high with flowers, candles, pictures, and teddy bears. Finally, she swung around to her apartment, now cut off to her unless she wanted a vigorous round of police questioning, and visited a few of the shops that she had enjoyed the most. It was there, in the street, just as she was turning around to go back to her lonely little motel room for the night, that a hand reached out and grabbed her arm.

"Oh, my God. Louise. _Louise_! I've been looking _everywhere_ for you! Jesus, where – where have you _been_?"

Arms enveloped her, squeezed her tightly against a warm, breathing body. All day she had felt like a walking corpse, and this contact with the living made her feel wrong, as if she were contaminating the person.

The person released her, but only just enough to take in her appearance. Louise stared up into the last pair of eyes she had expected to meet on the streets of Gotham.

"Mollie? What are you doing here?"

Louise said it so casually, as if it was a run-of-the-mill occurrence, a funny small-world type of happening, to find her friend, who lived and worked in Tennessee, standing right outside of her old apartment complex. Mollie's wide green eyes and freckled face took in her friend's disheveled appearance with obvious concern.

"What am I – I'm looking for _you_. I tried calling you again and again, and you didn't answer, and so I tried getting the sheriff from my town to track down some information on you because I thought you were missing, and he told me that practically everybody in your workplace had been _killed_, for Christ's sake, by some mass-murdering psychopath, and that the Gotham police suspected you'd been kidnapped by some _other_ mass-murdering psychopath. I felt like I'd fallen into a freaking Twilight Zone episode, I swear to God. I took the first flight out here with my brother – you remember Oliver, right? He always had that thing for you – and we've been trying to track you down ever since. God, _God_, I can't believe it – where have you _been_?"

These words feel like the soundtrack to her life, her current life. Where had she been? Louise pondered this as she followed Mollie blindly through the streets of Gotham, passing by strangers who are turned in on themselves, shifty-eyed and anxious and afraid. She was like a ghost, a shadow, something ethereal, no longer part of the stifling crowd of humanity. Mollie's hand was grasping hers, tugging her along in the same fashion a mother might tug a young child through a grocery store. Louise didn't feel like a child, though; she felt weary, so horribly exhausted that it was too much of an effort to think of where they were going or to blink away the tears that the sharp February wind caused.

Perhaps it was seconds later, perhaps an hour, that they reached Mollie's hotel. She was staying in something classy, something with pillars and statues of beautiful women in togas out front, and it didn't even look vulgar or like something reminiscent of Vegas, either. The lobby was more of a surprise; it was swarming with elegantly dressed people and employees dressed in pressed black-and-white attire, wheeling Louis Vuiton luggage to a wall of elevators, each with their own attendant sitting on a little stool just inside the door.

"Isn't this too expensive?" Louise asked. Mollie glanced over at her with wild eyes, looked at her as if she were completely insane.

"My brother's paying, of course. Listen, that's not what's important right now. You need to tell me where you've been, Louise. People have been _looking_ for you. I'm serious, here, all right? You're safe now, and it's time to pull it together."

Mollie and her iron-clad will, her unyielding personality even in the face of something as horrible as this, her friend's mental disarray and possible traumatism. Louise felt almost grateful to her for not pandering to the usual weaknesses, for not being awkward in the face of Louise's obvious distress, and yet she still couldn't take her seriously. What had she said, that Louise was safe? Safe?

"Yes, safe." The elevator doors opened on the fifteenth floor to admit a flustered looking couple, most likely tourists, who stood next to the elevator attendant and whispered excitedly in each other's ears.

"I didn't realize I'd said that out loud," Louise said as a response. "But it really wasn't necessary to come all this way. You shouldn't have, with the Joker . . ."

"_Fuck_ the Joker, okay? Fuck him. Did you really think that I could just sit on my ass in Tennessee while you were MIA for weeks?" Mollie cast a glance at the couple, who had gone silent and were staring at the two women from the corner of their eyes. The elevator attendant, bless the old man's soul, was clearly either deaf or too used to hearing incriminating conversations to care. Nevertheless, Mollie lowered her voice and continued, "We'll talk in the hotel room. Our floor's coming up."

On floor eighteen, Louise and Mollie exited the elevator. Once again, Mollie grabbed Louise's hand and guided her along, to the end of one hallway and past an ice machine. When they were standing outside a door that was indistinguishable from all the other doors save its number, Mollie swiped her key card through the lock and let them in.

Mollie's brother, who Louise thought looked vaguely familiar in a morning-after sort of way, was waiting just inside the door. He was on the telephone when they entered, but obviously not with anybody important, for the moment he saw Mollie was with her, he bid a hasty farewell and pocketed his cell before the man on the other end was finished saying goodbye.

"Where did you find her?"

His tone was brusque and businesslike, but it was obvious that this man, too, had spent some amount of time worrying over Louise's whereabouts. It made her very sad, for a moment, that she could scarcely remember the instances in which they had met. A fancy dinner with Mollie's latest waste-of-space boyfriend, too much champagne, and Oliver's dirty blonde hair and green-flecked brown eyes were all that she could remember of him.

"Just wandering around outside of her apartment building on the street. Oliver, she's not in a good state. I can't get a single answer out of her that isn't elusive or edgy. I think we should take her straight down to the hospital."

"Calm down. Let's just . . . think this over, first." Oliver passed around his sister and took a seat on a couch opposite from Louise. He gestured at a nearby chaise lounge and said, "Sit down, Louise."

She was glad that he hadn't asked this of her, and that there was no quavering awkwardness in his voice. For this reason, and because her feet and legs were killing her from walking all day, she complied. Oliver knit his fingers together and rested his elbows on his knees.

"Can you tell us what you were doing outside when Mollie found you? Let's start there and try to work backwards, all right?"

"I was sort of . . . thinking. That's all. Just taking inventory of it all."

This was a bullshit answer to anybody who wasn't in Louise's head and she knew it, but Oliver obviously cared more about the questions he was keeping on the tip of his tongue. Immediately after she answered, he asked, "Are you hurt?"

She thought about this in some depth before she responded. Was she hurt? Her legs, ankles, feet, and thigh were obviously quite tense and throbbing, but it was nothing that wouldn't get better with a few day's rest, or at least nothing that required these two people to rush her to the hospital, just about the last place she wanted to go besides the police station.

"No, I'm not hurt."

Mollie sat down beside Oliver after this, looking both relieved and bemused at the situation. Louise knew her old friend – funny how she thought of her as that, now, when only a few months had passed since they'd parted – well enough to know that Mollie was anxious to jump into action and do something, even if it wasn't the right thing to do.

"I'm glad to hear that," Oliver said softly. "Would you like a glass of water? Something else? I can give you some wine, if you'd like something a little stronger."

Again, a wave of appreciation for this man she hardly knew washed over her. For the first time since she'd entered this lavish hotel room, Louise took in her surroundings, including the two people in front of her. The hotel room itself was typical for such a high class deal: a small sitting area with a bar, table, and TV, two queen-sized beds in an adjacent room, a bathroom leading off in the opposite direction. More interesting to look at was Mollie, with her windblown dirty-blonde hair and Tennessee clothing, thin V-neck sweater and jeans, that must have been hell to walk around Gotham in. More interesting still was Oliver, who was looked as though he had come from a day at the office, though Louise knew very well that he lived somewhere on the west coast, like in Washington or something. His shoes were shiny, he was wearing black dress pants and a button-down shirt, and his hair, identical to his sister's in color, was combed smartly. He was the picture of control and assurance, and Louise knew automatically that he was the one dealing with authority figures.

"Just water." Mollie stood to go fetch the water from a mini-fridge beneath the bar. It was in a glass bottle, and the label looked Swiss. "I mean, tap would have worked, too."

Mollie just rolled her eyes and handed Louise the drink, which she downed in less than a minute. She had not realized until then how parched she had been. Mollie went to get her another.

"Tell me what happened when the Joker attacked your workplace, Louise. You weren't inside, were you? You went out for something. One of the men who survived said that you'd spoken to him just before it happened, that you were going to get coffee."

"Glenn? Glenn is alive?" Louise thought about the man she worked with, his outrageous laughter and his hilarious jokes at the coffee machine before their morning meeting.

"Yes, Glenn Bradley lived. He was shot once in the shoulder, but he's going to be fine."

Louise was glad, so glad that she immediately felt lighter, her muscles looser. Her rigid back relaxed, and she slumped where she sat, shoulders rounded forward. One person hadn't died; one person she'd liked, one person she'd cared about in even the smallest way, had not died. Even this felt like a victory to her.

"There was a witness, an older woman, who said that she saw somebody that matched your description get pulled into a van by the Joker."

"Yes, that's what happened."

She could have lied, of course. It was her first instinct, the natural response to such a question. She had been lying for months, not only with what she said, but with what she didn't say, the things she did not reveal. She had shielded the Joker, shielded the man she thought was Jack, from everything because admitting that she knew him was admitting that the boy she loved was gone forever, and she didn't have it in her to do it. Something was different in her, now. The night she had spent with the Joker had changed things, not only about their situation, but something within her, as well. She wasn't protecting him, anymore. Why should she? The Joker was as separate and distinct from Jack Napier as another person altogether; he had his memories, his outline, but the rest of him was warped.

Mollie cursed at Louise's admission; Oliver simply looked stunned.

"Louise, you aren't seriously telling us that – that you've been with the Joker this entire time? It can't be, you have to be lying, you can't be –"

"Mollie, shut up." Oliver was no-nonsense once again, his composure regained. "Can you tell us what happened after that, Louise? Where did you go with him?"

The van, the kiss, the fall. Louise played it back in her head like an old, familiar tape, and she couldn't quite believe she'd been such a willing participant in it all. "We went to the Narrows."

"The Narrows is closed off, Louise. You couldn't have gone there."

"You think I don't know where he took me? You know who we're talking about, don't you? If he can break out of Arkham Asylum, I think he can break in to the Narrows."

"You're right, of course," Oliver conceded easily. She couldn't tell whether he believed her or if he was just humoring the whims of a disturbed woman, but who cared? Louise was content to submerge herself in the ease of this exchange, the back-and-forth of their discourse that was no longer emotionally vexing to her. All she had to do was tell the truth, after all. Say what happened. These people weren't cops, they weren't out to use her information against the Joker, and even if Oliver passed what she told him along, what was the worst that would happen? The Joker's capture? Could Louise really desire anything else?

"So you after he took you to the Narrows, where did you go? Why did he take you?"

That was a more complicated query, and Louise chewed on her bottom lip for some time before attempting to answer. "He used me. For one of his plans against Hush. It wasn't the Joker who attacked my building; it was Hush setting him up, which was why this whole . . . Battle of the Masks has been going on since then. Hush was so stupid . . ."

"What plan did he use you in?" Oliver pushed forward, pulling her back on track. Louise looked at him apathetically. Days ago, revealing this information would have been more than she could bear. Now it felt easy, so easy it seemed almost silly, comical.

"He dressed me up like a whore and sent me to spy on Hush's men during their little victory celebration for killing all my coworkers. The Joker . . . likes to play those kinds of games."

"You talk like you know him," Mollie blurted, shrinking under the withering glare Oliver sent her way because of this comment. Louise felt no ill will towards her friend, towards either of them, for questioning her as they were. She wished she could place her hand against their cheeks one after the other and tell them to stop worrying, that she was past all this frenzy, past wondering why this had all happened.

This action would only raise red flags for them; they were on a different level of reasoning. Did this mean she was crazy? She knew that the insane often thought themselves sensible, perhaps even more sensible than the people surrounding them. Had she gone insane, or was she simply entering that elusive stage of grief: acceptance? For a grief so monumental, so ongoing, Louise's acceptance was of a singular and perplexing kind. Of course they wouldn't, couldn't, understand.

"I'd like to go to bed now. Please don't tell the police anything I've told you. You have to know it will only cause more problems for me. I want to leave after this. Take me away from this place. I don't need to see the graves anymore."

Who needed graves when the dead painted their faces, reached out to comfort you in dreams?

Mollie looked outraged and confused at this request, but Oliver hushed her. He looked Louise directly in the eyes and said, "I understand. You can take my bed. I'll sleep out here."

There were no more words. Louise stood with her glass bottle of expensive Swiss water and drifted into the adjoining room. With the stiff movements of an automaton, she shed her clothing, wrapping herself in the plush white heaven of a hotel bathrobe. At the end of Oliver's bed, he had laid out a pair of his boxer shorts, probably in anticipation for a morning shower, folded neatly. Louise picked them up, such an intimate detail, and ran her fingers along the soft fabric.

She wondered what it would be like to be married, and for just a moment, she closed her eyes and pretended that this was her life, that the kind man in the other room was her husband, and that horrible things had not happened to her. She pictured herself teasing Oliver for folding a pair of underpants, of all things. She imagined that she could love him completely, the way she had never been able to love another man after Jack. She imagined trading stories about past relationships, childhood sweethearts, that all went their own ways and did not meet terrible fates at the hands of angry mobsters.

Then she let it all go, every last bit of longing and bitterness and hatred. She let it flow out of her in waves, let it crash around her feet, staggering amounts of wasted energy that had been weighing her down for more than a decade. She was empty as she climbed into bed and clicked off the light, empty in a way she had never been before. It was not like loneliness, not like loss. She felt wiped clean.

A long bar of light cut across the room as the door clicked open. Mollie slipped inside, trying desperately to be quiet, but only succeeded in stubbing a toe on a dresser and letting out a strangled hiss of garbled swear words.

"You can swear all you want; I'm not asleep."

Mollie's outline paused, one hand still grasping her foot. "Did I wake you up?"

"No. I was just thinking."

Mollie did not ask Louise what she was thinking about. Louise guessed that her friend assumed it was filled with all sorts of horrors, the likes of which Mollie could never imagine. In a way, Louise supposed this might be true, and if this meeting had happened a month ago, it would have been. As it was, there was nothing but a peaceful sort of void within her mind, a quiet place the terror of her past couldn't touch. Only the desire for human contact remained. Louise imagined this might be very much what a newborn's mind felt like.

"Would you sleep with me tonight?"

"Yeah. Yes, of course."

The other woman asked no questions, but immediately shed her clothing and pulled on the first soft nightshirt she could reach in the dark. Mollie's long body slipped into the bed beside her friend's. Beneath the blankets, Louise reached out and curled her fingers into Mollie's open palm.

* * *

She thought he must have known what she was planning. The night she'd spent with him had been too far out of his control, too gentle, for his violent and vindictive nature to handle. He wanted to punish her for winning a battle against him, petty as it was, considering he'd been winning everything until that point.

Was he keeping tabs on her? Did he know that Oliver Singleton bought three tickets to Tennessee and that she was going to be one of the passengers? They had used a fake name, fake papers, to get as far as they did, and yet somehow, Louise didn't put it past the Joker to have figured it all out. Then again, maybe it was coincidence. He had yet to target an airport, and Gotham International was the perfect place to make a statement. Louise felt, at this point, that her luck was so terrible, anything was possible. She may just be struck dead by a comet falling out of the sky, for all she knew. She was just that unlucky.

Mollie was fidgety the entire ride to the airport, casting sidelong glances at her friend, just dying to dig up the dirt about what had really happened. Oliver was silent for the ride, only taking his eyes off the road to shoot warning glances at Mollie whenever his sister opened her mouth to speak. Louise rode with her forehead against the cool, frosted glass of the window, enjoying the dancing swirls of light February snow that dusted the ground. Life seemed altogether bearable in the state she was in – sad, terribly sad, but bearable.

And beautiful, too. How had she not seen it before? Dirty as Gotham was, Louise was spotting beauty everywhere. A man walking headlong against the wind, coat billowing out behind him, head bowed, nearly took her breath away. She felt that the smooth surfaces of her fingernails, smooth and beige like the surface of a pebble, could be artwork hanging somewhere in a museum.

As they were waiting for their plane, Mollie ripped through about ten magazines and then, throwing them aside impatiently, declared, "Let's talk about France. Do you want to go back there? In a few months, once we get settled in and all. It'll be like a mental holiday."

"Or an actual holiday. I think that's what you call it when you go abroad and forgo actual responsibilities." Oliver looked at Louise in amusement, and Louise found that she had actually surprised herself by being so quick. "Shouldn't I find a job or something? I can't mooch off of you forever."

Mollie rolled her eyes. "Oh, please. Oliver is picking up the tab for everything. God knows he doesn't need all his money, anyway. He's not even married, and he doesn't have kids. By the way, whenever you feel like giving me nieces and nephews, I'm very ready."

Their tone was playful, and Oliver returned the jab with an equally sarcastic comment about Mollie's string of lay-about boyfriends, but there was a noticeable tension in the air. The two of them were beyond anxious to leave this city and take Louise with them. She could already imagine the type of therapy she'd be forced to endure once she stepped onto Tennessee soil. Strangely enough, Louise herself was quite at ease. Gotham seemed very manageable to her as of late, perhaps because she figured what the hell else could it throw at her that she already hadn't encountered? Oliver and Mollie were rookies when it came to this type of living, but Louise was a seasoned veteran; even the massive crowds of angry, swarming people within the airport didn't faze her in the slightest, though it was putting Oliver visibly on edge.

"There are too many people here," he commented eventually.

"Everyone's high-tailing it out of this hellhole," Mollie responded, eyes nothing more than slits as she looked around her at the crowds of people packed within the terminal. "Can't say I blame them. Who actually wants to live in this place?"

"It breeds a very particular type of person," Louise responded. "Some people might say that alone makes living here worth it. Knowing those people. . . But then again, you can only say it's worth it if you're alive, right?"

It was one of those moments when Louie's audience was caught in a state of confusion: what was the correct response to a comment like this? A laugh, a sigh, a quiet shake of the head, a glance of pity? Neither Oliver nor Mollie seemed to know, so they both stayed silent, looking at one another for assurance that they were doing the best they could, considering the circumstances. Louise felt like sleeping, and yet the thought of another night without Lola's presence was unfavorable to her.

"It's almost over," Louise repeated aloud. The words tumbled over in her mind again and again. Almost over.

"What's almost over?"

At that moment the lights flickered, the PA system crackled. Oliver sat up straighter in his seat and looked around at the confused and agitated faces. A hush swept through the crowds of people. They were most of them from Gotham, trying to escape, and they knew. Mollie and Oliver were still oblivious, looking about them with wide eyes and commenting in small voices about how the weather didn't look bad enough to cause electrical problems. Louise felt sorry for them, immensely and deeply sorry.

"It's not the weather. It's him. It's the Joker."

The next moment they all heard it, his long, exaggerated throat-clear booming out from every corner and crevice of the airport. Several people immediately began to cry, breaking down completely. A woman not far from them crumpled, knees giving out beneath her, and Louise watched on as the man she was with held her up. The terror warped the stranger's face, pummeled her body like a physical force, and Louise was struck by how incredibly alive that woman must feel at this moment, to react in such a way. More alive than Louise had felt for some time, now.

"I've heard . . . that leaving the party early is unfor-_give_-ably rude."

Louise sat back in her hard plastic chair and stared straight ahead of her. Had he known she was going to be here, or was this purely coincidence, yet another comedy of errors that led her straight into his path? Knowing the Joker's temperament, Louise suspected that it was the former. He had known, just as he always seemed to know, exactly where she was and what she planned to do. Only this time, the novelty of it all was wearing off. She was exhausted, and she didn't want to play this game anymore.

"I'm going to the bathroom," Louise stated firmly, standing and making her way through the crowds before Oliver and Mollie could so much as open their mouths to stop her. Everybody was riveted to the Joker's words, terror in their eyes, hands reaching out to clasp their neighbors. How funny that the Joker – a complete madman – could cause even the most distant of strangers to reach for one another in their time of need. Did he know that he had this effect on people? Wasn't every one of those small acts a victory for Batman, a loss for the Joker?

Louise pushed her way to an isolated ladies' room tucked back into a corner and stationed next to a door crisscrossed in red paint and marked "Personnel ONLY." The bathroom was understandably empty. Everybody who had been lining up outside to use the restroom had dispersed to find their families or loved ones, and the people inside had likewise finished their business in record time. Louise was left alone to stare at her spotty reflection in the mirror. She splashed water on her face to calm her nerves. All around her, the Joker's voice echoed as he etched out his next plan, his next tortuous "social experiment" that dictated that, amongst themselves, they choose which members of society were valuable enough to live. Doctor, lawyer, schoolteacher? Did your profession dictate your worth as a human being? Did your gender, or your age, or your appearance? Were you more important, did you have more of a right to live, if you were wealthy than if you were poor?

Those who were deemed worthy of life were to be sent off in designated planes and left alone. They would escape unharmed, but with the massive guilt of knowing that for their life, a hundred others had died. Those left behind, the swarms of average people without special qualities to recommend themselves, would die. The air ducts, massive and pervasive, would be quick to deliver his newest device of death to the hundreds crammed within Gotham International's confines.

In every grating word, Louise heard Jack's rage. The Joker was punishing innocent people because, years ago, his little sister had died, and he had never understood, could never accept, that maybe it couldn't have turned out any differently. Maybe Lola was just too sick.

If only he could have the dreams she had once had, Louise thought to herself sadly. If only he could have seen his sister looking beautiful, alive, vibrant – happy in a way she had never been in life. Was it all a product of her imagination? Did it matter if it was, if it helped to ease one's grief?

Louise bent over the sink to splash water on her face once more. She had no desire to return to the throbbing, shrieking mass of people outside of the ladies' room door. If only Oliver and Mollie hadn't been pulled into this, as well. She grieved for them already.

As she was wiping off her face, the door opened, and Louise inwardly sighed. It had been such a promising solitude.

"It's you, isn't it?"

The voice that filled the tiled bathroom stunned Louise, straightened her spine and struck her nerves until her entire body was thrumming with acute pain. She knew that voice; more importantly, she knew the dull ache beneath Harleen Quinzel's words, the intensity of her jealousy and desperation. All of that rage, all of that passion, had been Louise's not so long ago.

Louise answered her as calmly as she could, using the last of the paper towel to wipe her face dry and look at the woman standing just inside the restroom door. "Is what me?"

Harleen was dressed to the nines to stand at the Joker's side, in flexible leather dyed black and red. Diamonds ran up one thigh and one rib in opposite colors, black-red-red-black. Her hair was blond, pulled taut into jaunty little pigtails that looked chillingly girlish. Her face was painted, black diamonds over the eyes and a perfectly applied lipstick smile. She might have looked to be in costume if it weren't for the wildness of her wide eyes. In her hand, she held a gun.

"You're the reason we're here. He's doing this . . . for you." Harleen's eyes narrowed, a lovely shade of blue, and Louise was struck by how pretty she must have been before all this, before the Joker had made her promises he never had any intention of keeping. "Who are you?"

"I'm Louise. Please don't point that gun at me. I just want to leave this place and never come back."

"Louise." Harleen tasted the name, rolled it around her tongue and then spat it out on the 'e.' "Well, _Louise_, I'm not lettin' you leave. You think you can get away so easy after you fooled around with my Puddin' behind my back? Did you honestly think you could steal him away from me? We're meant to be together, ya know."

Louise wanted to be frightened of the gun pointing at her chest; she felt she ought to be thinking of ways to escape, to overpower this lithe young woman and flee into the crowd. None of these things appealed to her. More than anything, Louise wanted to sit in this quiet bathroom, away from all the chaos outside, and just be. For just a little while, Louise wanted to think about nothing, to do nothing.

"Well?" Harleen demanded impatiently, and Louise realized that the young woman had actually been expecting an answer from her.

"Listen, Harleen –"

"_Harley_."

"Listen to me. I know why you've fallen for him, really. I know why you love him because I loved him once, too. But please, listen to me when I tell you, _he can never love you_. Don't you understand? He had that emotion in him once, but it's gone now. You can still get away from this, Harleen, you can still –"

"It's Harley, and I don't _want_ to get away from him! You don't know." She brandished her gun and took a step closer. Louise did not move; her heart did not beat faster or slower. "You think you can take him from me? You think that you can _ever_ give more for him than I have? He's _mine_, okay? I'm the only one who's got enough chops to stand by his side." Another step closer, a snapping intensity in the blue eyes. Louise, perversely enough, felt that what Harleen was saying was true. There wasn't another person in Gotham who could do what this poor, pathetic young girl had given up everything to do. "I'm not gonna let some old hag like you get in the way of that."

_It's almost over_.

All Louise could think to say that would express her feelings was, "I'm sorry."

And she was. She was so terribly sorry that another young woman would have to experience the deep chasm of rejection, guilt, and anguish that had already tormented Louise. She was sorry that there was nothing she could say that could stop Harleen Quinzel from facing a thankless and violent future. She was sorry that, once again, the Joker had won.

For a moment, just a split second before Harleen's resolve hardened, the wide blue eyes of a once-medical student, once-gymnast, once-daughter, looked lost and unsure. Then, so quickly Louise did not have time to register the change, Harleen's eyes flashed, hard as diamond, and she replied, "You should be."

It all happened in what felt like one breath. There was a shattering, ear-splitting noise that resounded again and again within the confines of the bathroom, and it was this sound that affected Louise most. It was so piercing it was painful, splitting her already frazzled nerves into halves and then zipping up her spine and cracking each vertebrae as it went. Louise couldn't move, couldn't speak, because the breath had been knocked from her body. Everything was on fire from that sound, and Harleen's lips were moving but Louise couldn't hear the words, couldn't understand anything at all.

She thought of Sara Burton, and the purple and green fireworks, and the way that child perched atop her father's shoulders had stretched out one chubby fist toward the blackened sky. She thought of Sydney White's cigarette stubs as she smashed out their glowing tips with the heel of her sneakers, untied laces flopping. She thought of Commissioner Gordon's exhausted face, of the dull glint of his wedding ring.

Her hand crept toward her abdomen, and when she looked down, Louise saw that her fingers were dripping crimson. Blood. She was bleeding.

She was bleeding?

Louise fell to her hands and knees, a great, pervasive weakness rendering her limbs limp and unresponsive. The bloody palm slipped from underneath of her, leaving a trail of sticky scarlet behind as her body toppled sideways. Dimly, Louise was aware that her body was shaking, that her breath was uneven, and that her heart, her heart, was palpitating in a furious, uneven sort of way, in a truly alarming way, in a way that convinced her, through the ringing of her ears and the sudden coldness of her limbs, that she was dying on the floor of the ladies' room in Gotham International.

_It's almost over_.

Should she hate Harleen Quinzel? Should she summon up the last of her energy to curse the woman who was slipping out unnoticed and disappearing into the crowd of screaming people? She wanted to, truly she did, but the only emotion she could muster up was pity, pity because that blond intern with the winsome manner of speaking would never, never experience anything beyond the pathetic façade of a relationship with the Joker. Pity because it Harleen would never have what Louise had had with Jack Napier, if only for a few years in the heart of the Narrows.

Louise's vision was swimming, and the tiles around her body were flooded red. What a mess she had made, after all. What a mess.

There wasn't a barrage of memories; her life did not flash before her eyes. Louise did not come to any soul-shattering revelation in her last moments, nor was she aware when the door swung open and the Joker entered in his lackey's clown mask. She felt his hands as he felt for her pulse, felt the strangest ghost of a tickle as his hair brushed her cheek. He whispered something in her ear, then, but whatever it was, she didn't hear it, and there was nothing he could say that would ever set things right anyway.

When she closed her eyes, it didn't feel like going to sleep; it felt, strangely enough, like waking up. Her rigid body, going cold and stiff there on the bathroom floor, felt light and warm. It felt like she was awakening after a long and exhausting nightmare, and somewhere deep, deep within her mind, Louise understood that when she opened her eyes again, she wouldn't be alone.

* * *

When she wakes, she is at the graves. The stone slabs are blank, chipped and moss-covered and crumbling at the base. Ivy and wildflowers, dandelions and clover, make a soft matting of the earth. The weather is warm, chill when the wind blows, and Louise wraps her arms around her chest.

Her chest.

She gropes around on her abdomen for something – what is it? Something wrong, something missing, something pierced – but finds only the firm suppleness of a much younger body. Seventeen, eighteen, can she remember what if feels like to run without getting winded and cartwheel and make love at twilight in ninety degree weather?

Yes. She remembers. She lives it there in front of the empty graves, runs and runs and runs and always comes back to this spot, circling through the misty surroundings without getting anywhere. She feels beguiled and laughs as if it is all a prank someone is pulling on her.

It is strange, because when she breathes, she has no real breath.

A tree emerges from the mist, behind the graves. It is tall and spindly and its limbs are drooping down low, boughs creaking under the weight of plump red fruit that look like peaches but smell like grapefruit. Louise reaches up and pulls one off, the limb snapping back and bouncing a little. Gravity. Here?

Here. Finally, she realizes. She is not where she was before. This is nowhere she has ever been. This is someplace she will never leave.

"You catch on fast." Lola is sitting on her tombstone, now, dressed in cherry red and dark-wash denim, the barest traces of a woman's curves gracing her once-wasted figure. Lola as she always should have been.

"I'm dead?"

"Almost. Not quite. Close your eyes. Can you still feel him?"

She closes her eyes and yes, there he is, hovering at the edges of her frantic mind. If she thinks hard enough, wants it desperately enough, she can just make out the tone of his voice – a little frenzied, a little furious – alternately murmuring and barking at her. She cannot, hard as she tries, make out his words.

"Yes," she says, opening her eyes. The place she is at seems far more threatening, now. She has brought back some of him with her; he lingers on her dying skin like perfume. All at once, she feels like weeping. "Oh. Oh."

"Do you remember when I told you that you'd know? What happens after you die?"

"It's almost over," Louise repeats numbly. The strange little fruit in her hand feels heavy, so monstrously weighty. "If I eat this, it's all over. If I don't –"

Lola doesn't laugh at her childish assumption. "No, it's not so simple. Or maybe it's simpler. The fact is, you're going to die no matter what you do. If you eat that thing or throw it at my head or claw up the dirt or rip out your eyeballs. You're going to die. You're dying now."

"But I'm not dead yet." Lola shakes her head again. "So you're not real, then. This is just like before, just like the dreams. I've made you up. I've created you to comfort me."

Lola, and the papery thinness of her skin, and the way her round eyes blinked up at her on the first day they'd met, suspicious and a little awe-struck. Lola on the last day she'd breathed, the last day she'd lived, asking Louise where her brother was.

"Maybe," the young girl says a little sadly. "But I don't think so."

And Louise stumbles forward, already anticipating the great relief, the ceaseless calm, she will find in the arms of her oldest, dearest friend. Lola steps forward to catch her as she falls, broken and dying at last, a marionette whose strings have finally been cut.

In the twilight of this not-world, of this maybe-heaven, Lola Napier cradles Louise Speller in her arms and tells her that everything, yes, everything, will be all right.

* * *

The Joker took inventory of his failed plan. Batman, a furious fight with Harley, a reckless drive through rain-soaked streets. He'd come from the airport, and nobody had died, nobody, nobody. Just her.

He looked over to the passenger seat where she was propped up into a sitting position, head slumped against the fogged glass of the window. She was wearing something too big for her, a yellow sundress of some kind that didn't quite fit in the chest or the hips, and it was drenched brown, that sickly sort of color that blood makes when it dries. She could almost be sleeping.

He swung the van he was driving around a turn, suddenly furious. One arm shot out and pushed her shoulder, hard, so that her body pitched forward and her forehead made a sickly clunking sound as it struck the dash, arms still dangling at her sides, in the first stages of death, of rigor mortis, that he had observed with apathy and interest on so many other bodies.

Two blocks from the cemetery, he skidded to a halt and laughed, laughed so hard he had no breath left, laughed until he was slapping the steering wheel with both palms and hooting with a dry, unforgiving sort of mirth. It took some time for him to regain control of himself and drive on, but he didn't feel quite right after that outburst. When he stopped in front of the cemetery gates, he stumbled on the way out of the van, a tumble of uncoordinated limbs with an unchanging face, like a ventriloquist's dummy come to life.

He pulled her out and dragged her body along behind him. He was weak from loss of blood and exertion and her dead, dead, dead weight was too much for him to carry. Her white legs, exposed in her soiled dress, made a slippery sort of noise against the dirt and brown grass as he maneuvered her body around gravestones. When he finally got to his plot of land, he dropped her without ceremony. He glanced at the child's name, Lola, etched on the grave to the left, and again he felt unsettled. He wanted to bury the bitch and never think of this again. He wished some compulsion stronger than himself had not dictated that he bring her here.

The earlier rain had softened the ground, but not enough to thaw deep under the soil, where winter's roots had frozen his grave into one block of solid earth. He dug with his hands like a dog beneath the words "Jack Napier" until his fingers bled, and then stumbled back to the van to retrieve a shovel, and then continued to dig. It was furious digging, limp hair swinging with his frantic motions and hot breath streaming out into the dead air.

When he finally hit wood, he briefly wished that he could keep going, dig forever and lose himself in it, in the rhythmic, monotonous physical exertion of it all. With one toe, he rolled her body over until she fell, a broken twirl of black matted hair, into the grave. When her body thumped against the lid of the coffin, he was certain, with striking clarity, that he would vomit. He turned aside and retched, hands on his knees and body doubled over, but he hadn't eaten for days and nothing came out except the barest trickle of old coffee and stomach acid.

After this, he jumped down into the hole with her, pushing her aside long enough to unlatch the warped wooden lid of the coffin and prop it open. The lining had been white, once, but it was eaten away by time and other things deep within the ground. There was a jumble of personal items that filled the box, and he threw out what he could to make room, scattering pictures and tattered garments without stopping to examine them. The sweater at his right foot was a soiled, worm-eaten rag with a faded and incomplete image of a face and three hands holding apples. The photograph in the top corner of the grave was of two strangers, a radiant girl with blue, blue eyes and a handsome, smiling boy he wouldn't have recognized even if he'd looked at it for years. He did not want to remember the face he used to have, so he didn't. He didn't want to remember his past, so he wouldn't.

Finally, finally, he managed to pick up her body long enough to deposit it within his own empty coffin, lying atop a bed of old photographs and the clothes his adolescent body had once worn. By this time her body was filthy, face streaked with mud and blood. He closed the lid to the coffin so he didn't have to look at her and stumbled backwards, overwhelmed by a sense of vertigo. It felt so familiar, this scene, and he half suspected a scarred mobster to be standing at the lip of the grave when he looked up at the rectangular patch of sky above him.

He had dreamt it, once, and he wracked his mind to remember the particulars of this dream, the why and how and when, because perhaps he was a prophet with some greater universal purpose after all. But all his weary mind came up with was a startlingly clear memory from long, long ago, in which the woman he'd just locked inside a wooden box looked up at him wearing a crisp school uniform and scuffed black shoes and laughed, laughed, laughed until she cried.

There, six feet deep in his own grave, Jack Napier cried out one long, agonized scream of despair into the stale, empty air.


	37. Epilogue

**Epilogue:**

_Lola_

or

-Ascension-

_Except to heaven, she is nought;_

_Except for angels – lone;_

_Except to some wide-wandering bee, _

_A flower superfluous blown;_

_Except for winds, provincial;_

_Except by butterflies,_

_Unnoticed as a single dew_

_That on the acre lies._

_~Emily Dickinson_

* * *

Let me open with something not many people know:

The man they call the Joker despises sleep. His active body is repulsed by it; his mind, filled with constantly shifting, frantic, violent thoughts, will not settle down long enough to fall into an easy slumber.

And then there are the dreams.

They come on a fairly regular basis, whenever the limitations of his human body catch up to him and he succumbs to unconsciousness. He is human, after all, as so many people forget. Exhaustion, hunger, thirst – these are all things that happen to him regularly, just as they happen to anybody you might know.

He is not a higher being. He is not an alien, a vengeful god, a demon, the incarnation of Lucifer himself.

He is a human being, a simple man. He is a man who dreams. Plain and simple. So when you put it that way, doesn't it seem to take the edge off things? This murderer, this larger-than-life criminal, sleeps. For several hours a day, he is dead to the world, locked in his own subconscious as his body regenerates.

Those are the facts. Now here is the big secret:

When he dreams, he dreams of me.

I bet he thought it was easy, so simple, to move on and become something monstrous. No friends, no family, nothing to hold him back – such perfect conditions for chaos. And those people who loved him wouldn't even see it; they wouldn't even know. It's easy to kill with impunity when you don't have to look into the eyes of somebody who worships you and create an explanation for the blood on your hands. It's so easy.

I wasn't really about handling things the easy way. You see, I figure it's my job to bother him. I think it's in a contract somewhere.

So, whenever he can't stop his eyelids from drooping shut, that's when I strike. I slip in soundlessly, effortlessly, right into a mind he likes to tell himself is undecipherable. Oh, he thinks he's such a mystery. But I've got him figured out, and I think by now he knows it. The who and what of my existence matters very little – specter or figment, ghost or hallucination. When he sleeps, I am as real to him as the day I was born into his world.

He sleeps, and, like tonight, I find him. The dreams change constantly, and I like to amuse myself by thinking up better ones each time. These last few have been torturous, I know, because the truth is I'm not happy with this man, this boy I used to know. And if he can't feel the effects of his actions during his waking hours, then, well, it certainly is up to me to make him feel it during unconsciousness.

As in any other dream, he starts out fresh. His face is clear and young again, unscarred, with freckles dotted across his nose and a tangle of blond curls drooping over his brow. He's lanky. He doesn't look like a man quite yet. His spidery fingers reach up and stroke his smooth face; he finds stubble in places he hasn't felt it in years. It feels like a new experience every time, though he's done this dance a thousand times over. I can see the awe, the shock, the great sadness in his eyes as he looks at himself. It feels so real. I always make sure that it feels so very real.

I'm an expert at this by now. You gotta build up the tension, let him think he's got something back that he's wanted for years. And so here she is, and when she enters she smiles at me, just our little secret, in the split second before he notices her.

It was fun, for a while, doing it alone. But ya know, you can never underestimate the value of a good friend in the line of duty.

It works perfectly, as I knew it would. He spots her. She's beautiful, radiant, absolutely glowing. The starched white of her dress, the stockings, the scuffed black shoes – it's all perfect, and damn, she's good. We make a great pair, she and I, our own little band of torturers.

They speak, her voice a low hum of soothing, sensual words. Her hands reach out and touch him, gently, lovingly, and I can see his eyes welling up, can see the ache bubbling over. They kiss, long and deep, just two teenagers in love again.

For just a moment I look on, and the full impact of what they missed out on hits me. It could have been great. It could have been a love for the ages, the sort of thing you read about in books or watch at the movies.

But this is life, this is death, and it hurts.

Now it's my turn, and I ready myself. In two quick strides I come up behind them, their eyes closed, lost in themselves.

I stab her. The knife is long, brutal-looking, certainly a thing he's used himself on countless victims. She chokes, gasps, whimpers, and they break apart. The look on his face is one of horror, revulsion, absolute despair.

The blood, deep red, blossoms out across her stark white blouse.

He looks up at me – at the blank expression on my face, at my appearance, just as he remembers it – and I can see him shatter. I'm never whole when I come to him. I always exist exactly as he saw me last. I always look like I'm two inches and a shaky last breath away from death.

"Why?" he rasps. "Why are you punishing me?"

"Somebody has to, Jack."

She crumples to the floor, her body a heap of broken, tangled swan-limbs. She is crying, but I know this is not for show. I know how much this charade really hurts her, and I'm so sorry for it. It hurts me too, but it has to be done. Somebody has to do this. Somebody has to spark a little bit of humanity in him, if just for a moment, if just in his dreams. Maybe, one day, with the grace of God, it will bleed over into his conscious life. That is my dream, my hope, my secret. I wish I could save him. I do whatever I can, even if it hurts us both, just in the hopes that one day a life might be spared.

"Look what you've _done_. Christ, she's dying, she's . . ."

"What _I've _done? Jack, what have _you _done?"

And suddenly he looks down at his palms, drenched in wet, sticky scarlet. Immediately, they fly up to his face. He finds scars there, grotesque ridges cutting through flesh that was, just moments ago, whole and beautiful again. The blood on his hands streaks long, jagged edges across his cheeks, painting his smile scarlet.

He sobs over Louise's broken, dead body, his shoulders shaking.

"Stop, stop, I can't take it anymore, I can't stand it." Furiously, he looks up. "Why are you doing this, Lola? Why are you doing this to me?"

We've fallen into a nice pattern, he and I, but it never hurts any less when he asks me this. My answer is as true as it ever is, just as true as it was the last thousand times I've uttered it. When I speak, my voice throbs.

"Because I'm your sister, and I love you."

* * *

He wakes up in an armchair. Behind him, that horrid woman is flipping through blue-prints and

humming a disjointed, inharmonious tune. The Joker wipes at his cheeks. They are wet.

He is human. He dreams. He cries. He has no control over these things. But I do.

Except, now that the dream is fading, now that the pain is receding into the recesses of his mind, he just feels angry. He feels furious that, once again, he has lost.

Harleen, she smiles brightly when she sees him stirring, this woman who is so in love with the monster he's become. "Oh good, you're up! Listen, Puddin', I think we oughta blow something up tonight. Ssomethin' that'll shock 'em. An elementary school, maybe. People are _crazy_ when it comes to their kiddies."

Jack, he gets to his feet and stretches, his back still turned towards the poor, foolish girl who actually calls herself his girlfriend. His mouth is set in a tight line.

"Ya know what, Harl? That sounds like a _great_ idea."

He likes to have his fun, our Jack.

But don't worry, because everybody has to sleep. Everybody has to dream.

And when he does?

Well, when he does, he finds us there. And we're always ready for him.


End file.
